Correct but most of the drone violations are people doing it through ignorance. They are unaware of the laws, don't even know there are laws or think the laws don't apply for them.
This it the majority of "buy off the shelf" drone users. This same group also is mainly breaking the rules out of laziness and have no will or technical ability to modify the drone to allow it to fly illegally in the geofenced areas.
Its these people the new restrictions will work for and prevent most of the issues.
The tiny minority of technically-savvy deliberate law breakers of course won't be affected but for those, hopefully, the new stronger criminal level punishments and fines can be brought in full force to teach the a lesson.
All valid points I agree with, but the key bit in there is this bit:
"They are unaware of the laws, don't even know there are laws or think the laws don't apply for them." And that's going to change with this new legislation how, exactly? Chicken. Egg.
Frankly, I'm not expecting the new regulations to change things too much in practice; it really just gives the CAA/police a larger net to catch offenders with and a bigger stick to hit them with if/when they do. A few publicised examples of prosecutions might help with things, but that happens for other similar crimes as well (dangerous driving, for instance) and yet people still commit them on a regular basis. Realistically, while they do need legislation and a deterrant, which is what the new regulations and penalties provide, if they want to actually
prevent incidents then they need to adopt a technical approach as well. That means anti-drone tech at airfields and other NFZs like prisons (supposedly now in the process of being procured and deployed), and it means mandating the support of NFZs on drones for sale (and is something DJI will probably be highly supportive of since they already have this tech and some of their competitors do not.)
If, as seems highly likely, the majority of offenders are doing so out of simple ignorance then they're going to continue doing so unless the new legislation is communicated to them somehow, keeping in mind the authorities have very little data on who owns drones and those most likely to be ignorant of the law are also unlikely to be on drone forums or other places where they might find out about the law, and you can't really rely on the media for that. Oh, sure, they'll already know who has a PfCO (a group less likely to be breaking the law anyway), and they'll have a list including non-PfCO holders once the new mandatory registration is in place, but again - you've got to let everyone with a drone know they need to register *and* get them to actually do it when the chances of being caught, especially if you are don't do anything especially stupid, is apparently right around zero if Gatwick is anything to go by. Yeah. Good luck with that.
Time will tell, but if anyone is thinking the new laws and registration requirements are going to be a panacea for people doing dumb things with drones - even after they've had some time for more casual pilots to become aware of them and a few high-profile prosecutions covered by the media - I think they're going to be sorely disappointed.
