I get ya. Lots of numbers with virtually zero data.
No data whatsoever. Only some very questionable assumptions.
At the time all the media hype was about supposed near-misses (even mere sightings) between manned aircraft and drones. The FAA was under pressure to do "something". Their knee-jerk response was
registration, as though registration will somehow prevent drones from colliding with manned aircraft.
Registration was a done deal. The FAA had already decided that would be the solution to everything. The only question was how to implement it and how to decide what's dangerous enough to require registration versus [safe enough?] not to require registration.
The committee arrived at 250 grams, not based on any actual risk to aircraft, instead based solely on the risk of dropping an object from 500ft into a densely populated urban area. 250 grams was then carved into the stone tablet, and so it was written.
I read the ICAO data and (not) astonishingly there was no UAV data. It seems to me that when government creates regulations it does so for generally two reasons: 1) Data that would indicate that a problem exists that needs to corrected. 2) Fear.
1) Obviously, there's no data. Despite registration we still have reports of near-misses. Despite registration we have incidents like the Gatwick Christmas shutdown. Gov't registration has not
ever played a useful role in
actual collisions between drones and manned aircraft.
When the Blackhawk helicopter collided with a DJI Phantom off the coast of New York City, the culprit was identified, not by any FAA registration, but by the serial# on the drone's motor tracked back through DJI's own registration.
When the heavy Aeryon SkyRanger surveillance drone brought down an RCMP helicopter here in Canada, it wasn't the drone's registration number that identified the culprit. BOTH the drone and helicopter were being operated by the RCMP themselves.
Despite the bazillions of drones and model aircraft operated daily around the world, there's still zero data to indicate that registration is either necessary or effective.
2) It's all about Fear.
When Canada published our drone regulations there was no justification or risk analysis or data (nothing at all) explaining the choice of 250 grams being the threshold for requiring registration. It's just become the accepted norm. The FAA did it first, everyone else subsequently copied that number. Everyone except Japan. They went with 200 grams, presumably because their "
densely populated urban areas" are
more densely populated?
The only
positive benefit for drone enthusiasts is that, as a direct consequence of that FAA committee
report which gave birth to the 250 gram threshold, we can similarly conclude with equal certainty that any object
less than 250 grams, with a coefficient of drag equal to a baseball, when dropped from 500ft into a "
densely populated urban area" is
70% not likely to result in fatality.
Furthermore, with extended arms and windmilling props, a sub-250 gram drone will certainly have a significantly much higher coefficient of drag than a baseball, and is typically not flown above 400 ft, and is not often flown in a "
densely populated urban area", which is usually densely populated with houses and structures protecting their vulnerable occupants.
All that to say, there is very little chance of anyone ever being able to justify further regulation of sub-250 gram drones based on any estimated risk to public safety.
That leaves only Fear.
You just need look to Europe for that. Even sub-250 gram drones need to be registered if they
carry a camera, because everyone knows a camera is capable of much greater harm to humanity than an object falling from 500ft.
?
