seeker_ktf
Second Officer
Flight distance : 218474 ft
United States
Offline
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This is a whole new thing.
Every time a new technology appears, regulators are confused about what to do. Back when "horseless carriages" first started appearing, nobody did anything. Remember that there was no such thing as a "horse license" so at first people just thought cars where like that. It turns out that few "irresponsible" drivers motivated laws, traffic signals, licensing, inspections...
As with automobiles, you originally didn't need a license to fly airplanes, drive motorcycles, use ham radios, or a load of other things that everyone takes for granted. You still don't need a special license to drive/sail boats in most US states (horrifically).
Listen folks, it's just a matter of time. Personally, I won't mind needing a license to fly a multi-rotor. I'm also in favor of individual registration (i.e. whatever replaces a tail marker [maybe even transponders]) in case there *is* an incident. I don't know what the big deal is. The minute that high-quality flying machines started getting mass produced was the day that regulators *needed* to get involved.
Too many people are treating these high quality copters as toys.
We're only at the beginning. Imagine what it's going to look like in 10 years. First off, they're going to be waaaaaay cheaper. There's all sorts of cool "drone uses" that people will come up with. (Personally, I'm waiting on my single use emergency drone that flies out and establishes a two way communication line for when cell phone coverage is spotty, and reports back my GPS location to authorities.) Delivery drones? What about a farmer or rancher that wants to send his fleet to check out the back 40? Rangers looking for fires. And it's only a matter of time before criminals start using them for more nefarious uses. There are so many things that come out of either the ability to fly something easily, or the ability to fly remotely/automatically (or both) that drones, in some form or another, are going to begin to saturate some airspaces.
So for me, I'd rather have regulation on the *people* rather than the devices. Let the machine do whatever the users tells it to do and hold the pilot responsible. "Quads don't fly near airports, people do." |
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