How many drone related fatalities?

[AnzacJack]

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Should we ban light aircraft?

 

[GFields]

I understand where you're coming from, but accidents happen.

 

[Cafguy]

Ban?....NO BUT somewhere the word responsibility was thrown out. Pilots make tragic mistakes and sometimes completely stupid ones. Banning airplanes is not the answer learning to be responsible is.
A few years ago a man packed his family in his new twin engine for a trip to Vegas now this pilot decided to depart with moderate weather along his flight path, he was not instrument rated. The clouds caught up to our pilot and he ended up in a death spiral, his plane crashed in an almond orchard killing himself and the other 5 members of his family. ( 3 fatalities were children under the age of 10). If this pilot would have considered his limitations and stayed on the ground they would all be alive today.

 

[Max Headroom]

Should we ban light aircraft?

No, as far as we know these pilots were not breaking any aviation laws/rules they were unlucky that's why its called an "accident"

The types of drone pilot who get us all a bad name go out on purpose to fly where they shouldn't, i think its time they made the Drone Flyer Theory Test compulsory for all drone pilots it may put some of these irresponsible idiots off buying one in the first place.

See example below -

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[AeroJ]

Should we ban light aircraft?

No, but pilots found to have been flying lower than the proscribed altitudes, especially those that do it over parkland and areas where public congregate or where drones are known to fly should have their licenses suspended or removed and they should face the same massive personal fines we as UAV pilots are subject to.

In my personal experience it is almost a daily occurrence to spot a light aircraft only a few hundred feet above residential and park areas. Their disregard of altitude minimums seems universal, and it appears that they view these rules as at best discretionary, and at worst, not applicable to them !!

 

[mavic3usa]

Should we ban light aircraft?

I don't think you can make the comparison here. The only way to do this is to wait until the next time a drone is involved in a near-miss with a manned aircraft or a drone is flying some place it should not be and therefore increases the risk of collision with a manned aircraft. Then you can point back to the this thread.

 

[AMann]

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Should we ban light aircraft?

I don’t see any comparisons to this with drones. How about cars? They carry people also.

 

[tstr14]

Using similar logic, 114 people died in gym related accidents in the past 17 years, whereas only one person died while eating a donut. Obviously we should all stay away from gyms and head to the donut shop!

 

[Bad Santa]

Cars crash. Planes crash. Bicycles crash. Motorcycles crash. Workplaces have accidents. People get sick and die from food.
Ban them all.

 

[Max Headroom]

Using similar logic, 114 people died in gym related accidents in the past 17 years, whereas only one person died while eating a donut. Obviously we should all stay away from gyms and head to the donut shop!

I have been doing that for years

 

[Felix le Chat]

I have been doing that for years

....the gym? or the donut shop? Oh!..… truck driver.... that'll be the gym then.

 

[Felix le Chat]

There have been over 30,000 recorded deaths as a result of commercial and non-commercial air incidents since the first recorded aircraft death in 1903.

Number of minced, dismembered and deceased victims of consumer class drone incidents?.... Erm.... none... but there have been one or two nasty cuts.

Number of deaths, injuries and outright maimings since the deployment of the General Atomics Reaper? That's anybody's guess.

 

[AnzacJack]

I wasnt for banning light aircraft. I fly them all the time. It was just a conversation starter. Could of started the same thread with a gun related death, but I know that's a no-go conversation with you yanks.
I guess the real question is, are drone operations for recreational pilots under threat?
I dont think so in Australia. But as technology increases the capabilities, who knows.
The biggest concern i have is with some advertising aliexpress for mini bombs with electronic strikers already attached and ready to trigger whatever you might think of attaching. I struggle to see any safe legitimate use for these.

Anyway, thanks for the conversation and keep flying safe people

 

[Cafguy]

All those cleaners and Fresheners you use at home cause 900,000 premature deaths A YEAR and thats just from the air pollution aspect alone! Should we ban pine-sol?

 

[AnzacJack]

All those cleaners and Fresheners you use at home cause 900,000 premature deaths A YEAR and thats just from the air pollution aspect alone! Should we ban pine-sol?

Should we?

 

[Cafguy]

Oh how I hate the smell of Pine-sol on a Saturday morning...I say DO IT !

 

[Max Headroom]

Oh how I hate the smell of Pine-sol on a Saturday morning

They should make it smell like napalm

'I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning' | Apocalypse Now

 

[Calson]

I live in a "urban" area and next to a marine reserve and the minimum AGL for planes is 1000 feet but 99% of the aircraft passing overhead are below 500 feet with an AGL of 200 to 400 feet. There is no way for the FAA to enforce its regs.

 

[AnzacJack]

Of course they can.
They just cant enforce their regs everywhere, all the time.
You could say police cant enforce speed limits on the road because you see people speeding.
They do what they can with resources allocated to them.
How many of these aircraft at 200ft have you reported? You should almost be able to see tail numbers at that height

 

[AeroJ]

How many of these aircraft at 200ft have you reported? You should almost be able to see tail numbers at that height

I have wanted to report literally hundreds over the years ! Their continued habitual abuse of the 500 ft rule in skies near me seems to me to be entirely unsupervised and unchecked - like the FAA and CAA know it's going on but couldn't care less, and are uninterested in the concerns of UAV pilots telling them about this.

Of course the reason these things don't get reported very often is because getting viable evidence from the ground is almost impossible. By the time you have seen and considered that a plane might be lower than its minimums it has nearly always passed by already, and will be all but out of sight of ground-based mobile phones. Especially if we are flying our machines at the time (using an RC2, for example, phone will be off and packed away most of the time), there simply isn't the time to get a device out and record their infractions in a useful way. If we did manage to capture them on film from the drone itself or any ground cams we have set up in advance, they will be <2 px wide in typical resolution photos and no identifying marks (other than the general outline) will be visible, even when maximally zoomed.

When I am at home and happen to see low-flying aircraft I go on Flight-radar 24 and look them up. Half of them aren't even there, being, as they are, army vehicles, police or ambulance helicopters (all of which I realise are not necessarily bound to minimums over residential / recreational areas), and other services not deemed suitable for public scrutiny on the map. Sometimes other data is there but not altitude.

And when I am shown an altitude by that site, it rarely seems more than vaguely correct or accurate. It's like the stats show what they SHOULD be doing, not what they ARE doing ! It would take a serious sustained effort to try and deduce the actual height of aircraft from ground-based photos, and I imagine that is time none of us really have because we are all too busy diligently following our own over-reaching rules and managing our own flights ! It's a proper 'no-win' / 'can't win' situation as far as I can tell...

And yet if an aeroplane pilot says he has seen what he thought might be a drone out of the corner of his eye for a micro-second, that doesn't seem to require ANY actual evidence, and is diligently logged and reported as if it were fact, so that it can feasibly appear in any potential conflict lists they would find it useful to publish later...