Nigel_
lvl.4
Flight distance : 388642 ft
United Kingdom
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SPIKE_151 Posted at 2017-5-5 02:12
I had a look around the web last night to see if I could find instances of people being injured by drones. Given that there are huge numbers of drones flying every day, much more than commercial aircraft, I could only find a couple of incidents. One was at a canadian event and a phantom 3 hit a woman on the head , and she went to hospital for whiplash injuries, not any type of concussion even though the video clearly shows the drone falling vertically onto her head.
I think we all know that there is hysteria about drones, that is a world away from what actually is taking place. I'm all for regulation of drone owners, including registration, flying skill testing and insurance, even for hobby flyers. I have certainly seen single engine helicopters taking off and landing at Battersea heliport in london, so im not sure in all cases the single engine rule applies, and as we all know, if you had three engines and your jesus nut comes undone, it will come down without any control.
I think it is clear that a Phantom can be dangerous, A P4 traveling at 60mph could seriously injure someone, but the same is true of many things we use every day, a kite can be very dangerous but there are no calls to regulate those since very few people get injured by them. Unlike a kite, drone manufacturers can implement speed limits to improve safety, maybe why the P4P is limited to 46mph even with a tailwind.
I hope that the regulations will be updated soon.
For consumer drones flown without having to be qualified the drones should have to pass a safety test to ensure the risk of injury is very low (not non-existent), that may mean keeping the weight low, may require obstacle avoidance capable of avoiding people for heavier aircraft, may require a satisfactory reliability record, airbags, speed limits etc.
For larger, heavier, faster drones, drones without obstacle avoidance etc., they can require registration and a qualified pilot.
There is no law of 500 meters vlos, no distance is specified, just that you must be able to avoid other aircraft in the vicinity; but I'm not sure your farm example is acceptable, I think you should always be capable of avoiding helicopters that sneak up behind you at 50m altitude. Until our drones have systems to communicate with nearby aircraft (helicopters, planes, other drones) and autonomously agree collision avoidance then I think the line of site regulations need to remain. |
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