[michael_miller]

I fear the stupidity and ignorance of inexperienced drone operators. Our airspace is complex with lots of rules and regulations to ensure safe separation of aircraft. Trained pilots have enough trouble obeying the rules and being safe, so I question whether someone who has no formal training is capable of doing so. What happens if an inexperienced drone operator is going down the Hudson River corridor without reading up on the radio procedures, while I'm barreling down at 140 knots? Pilots are trained to look up special airspace before doing a flight, but how would someone who just bought a drone off the shelf be familiar with these practices? There's no inherent reason that drones can't follow the same procedures and be just as safe as airplanes today, but it's dangerous to have the attitude of "buy it off the shelf and go fly it with no training."

The privacy issue doesn't concern me as much, since it's already possible to rent a helicopter and follow someone around all day. The only attribute that's changing is the cost: rather than paying $300/h for a helicopter, you can pay a couple bucks an hour for constant surveillance.

[BorisMelnik]

Very good points you make, and I relate. I own a drone that I use for photography purposes, strictly as a hobbyist and hacker/tinkerer. It makes people uncomfortable. Once I learned proper control I went into a few areas where there were a few people, and I could definitely see a few "uncomfortable" looks. I couldn't even imagine what would happen when more people start using drones in crowded downtown areas.

[ceejayoz]

Consumer-level "drones" are just remote control aircraft, which have been safely flown with minimal training and regulation for decades.

[grannyg00se]

Flown in remote, designated flying fields sanctioned by a regulatory body whose membership were all trained and checked out.

At least in my experience. You didn't have people flying RC choppers or airplanes in the street.

They were quite a bit heavier, larger, and noisier so you didn't have the same issues as we're now having to face with drones.

[darkmighty]

Being small, lightweight and silent actually makes a good case for their use in many situations. Impact against aircraft becomes less probable and a lot less dangerous; silence undermines the case against disruption and noise pollution.

Drone seem like a very simple matter to me, it seems americans are ignoring a long of history with model aircraft and simply common sense, specially when it comes to privacy concerns. Simply making drones unregulated wouldn't mean the city would be dominated by them overnight. Common sense snooping regulations should apply. Do you frequently see people snooping their neighbors intrusively? Why would they use a drone for that? Common sense should dictate the operator is responsible for it's misuse and any accident.

In Brazil you are essentially free to use drones however you wish; there's no relevant regulation so you'd have to do something really bad to have someone come after you. Yet there's no drone abuse, and plenty of cool applications. I've been to a bike race some time ago and the finishing line was filmed by a drone, it was pretty cool. People are using drones for mapping, agriculture, media, etc. I haven't heard of a single problem with aviation or privacy.

[Retric]

Fairly small RC aircraft have occasionally killed people. So it's not so much safe as it is simply rarity that's allowed RC aircraft to be unregulated.

IMO, if your willing to fly it into yourself at full speed it's safe enough to fly without any regulation. More dangerous than that and basic certification seems like a reasonable precaution.

[ceejayoz]

Pencils and frying pans have also "occasionally killed people" while remaining deemed "safe".

[Retric]

If you hit someone with a frying pan it's considered assault with a deadly weapon so it's not considered 'safe' just stationary without direct attention. You basically have to have to attack someone for frying pan's or Pencils to hurt someone, where all it takes is intention or any number of mechanical / software failures to cause harm with a drone which is a vary different situation. It's the difference between a car and a gun and you need a licence to drive a car on the public roads.

[hrktb]

Genuine question, but does it change much compared to a wild bird ? Yhey don't respect regulations nor space rules either, and I hope it's OK. If we lump drones in the same category shouldn't it be OK as well ?

[skriticos2]

"Most accidents occur when the bird hits the windscreen or flies into the engines. These cause annual damages that have been estimated at $400 million within the United States of America alone and up to $1.2 billion to commercial aircraft worldwide."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_strike

Relatively few fatalities for humans, but very high cost. And they are not made of metal or durable plastics. They are also less likely to fall onto your head with rapidly rotating blades due to technical failure.

[Someone]

I would trust bird reflexes more than those of a random drone operator, birds aren't made of metal, and, without regulations, drones could weigh whatever the customer wants to pay for. News crews might replace their helicopters by drones weighing a thousand pounds.

Regulations do not necessarily mean that you can't fly any drone without a permit.

[Perdition]

Have you seen the kind of damage large birds do to aircraft?

This wouldn't be an issue if we were only talking about upgraded small RC aircraft being used as drones, but some companies are selling much larger drones that are way outside of existing "bird strike" parameters.

You can't have dozens of unregulated news drones the size of a small car flying through the same airspace as rescue choppers.

[atlantic]

Maybe the problem could be solved at the software level, rather than through operator training. Drones would have the different rules governing airspace built into them, and would either override illegal operator commands, or at least warn the operator that he is doing something illegal, and log the incident. This would make them considerably more expensive, but it would solve the whole issue of regulation.

[Already__Taken]

DRM for drones...

Not going to happen. There's nothing special at all about the hardware to fly one so if anyone can make their own there's no point even trying to put DRM on it.

This is the same as trying to ban certain 3d printer files the gov. doesn't like.