Therein lies the problem. I don’t have an issue staying within the rules but I can imagine the frustration of people who live in no-fly regions.
Indeed that is the problem. However, I think policy based on data is better than policy not based on it. And a good analysis of the data takes serious effort. Perhaps the best we can hope for on a forum like this is informed conversation by practitioners, but, again, I think better informed by data than not.
To the degree that we're thinking of it in analogies, is the current widely-open environment more like:
- cars: where the only thing keeping up from having equivalent fatalities is the relatively small number of sUASes in the air? If so, then perhaps cars are a starting point for effective regulation, though even with that, over 38,000 Americans died last year from fatal crashes.
- bikes: largely unregulated (at least in the US), shares the road with cars, but it isn't a bloodbath -- perhaps because of some sensible regulations like bike lanes and also because the bicyclist suffers the cost of an accident more often than a driver
- motorcycles: like bikes but regulated like cars
- skateboards?
- Segway?
Anyway, my point is that data is the start of a good conversation. From what I've seen so far, it seems many of these conversations devolve into shouting matches about obeying the rules as opposed to blithely not following them. I'd like this forum to talk -- intelligently and driven by data -- about what should be, not just what is.
Please don't take anything I'm saying as a challenge to the authority of the current regulations, or a challenge to those who say they should be enforced.