Can you say that again, but, in english?
The news typically can't get their facts straight, and many articles might include directly conflicting information but anyhow...
If an unmanned aircraft crashes out in the middle of an open field where nobody is, we can expect nobody to get hurt.
Most people think that the rare event of an airliner crashing will most likely kill everyone on board, but that's not always the case.
I'd say that this sums it up pretty well from the article.
The
Government Accountability Office’s report in May 2018 accurately summed the situation up, “FAA told us that most of the reports cannot be verified because a small UAS typically is not detected by radar, the small UAS pilot is usually not identified, or the small UAS or other physical evidence is not recovered. FAA and some aviation industry stakeholders also told us that the
reliability of many of the reports is questionable; FAA explained that this is because pilots can have difficulty positively identifying objects as small UAS, given their small size, their distance from the observed position, the speeds at which a manned aircraft and a UAS are operating, or the various factors competing for the pilot’s attention. ”
People reporting the sightings from the ground have trouble with it too.
The people operating the drone from the ground required to be focused on where the drone is at all times, but may not be able to see what might be coming at the drone at the same time.
The higher a drone/quad flies near where other aircraft fly if it is capable of getting there, is likely to get carried off in the wind too.
And also,
To give you context, during this period of time the FAA was creating regulations illegally and large numbers of sightings benefited the FAA’s argument that they needed to by-pass the laws governing the FAA in how they create regulations and the FAA is allowed to create emergency regulations due to the rapidly growing sighting numbers.
And please keep in mind these are sightings…..not mid-air collisions, near mid-air collisions, near misses, etc. They are sightings which DO include some near mid-air collisions. There have been a few mid-air collisions
but they are not counted in this data.
Why not? I thought collisions is what we were interested in, not sightings.