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Knowledge Troll [soylentnews.org] writes:

In England there has recently been a horrific tragedy [bbc.com] that resulted in a 16 month old child losing an eye after a drone crash landed on top of them. This is a terrible event but it isn't the first time [arstechnica.com] someone's drone went kill all babies. Actually this isn't the second time a drone did this either: it is the second time an irresponsible pilot is screwing up remote control flying machines for the rest of us pilots and it got into the news. It is very problematic that babies are much more cute than the average remote control helicopter and most of the population likes babies more than flying pieces of plastic and metal.

People are dumb with these devices and lack respect; this is getting out of control. If bad pilots keep hitting babies it'll be impossible for anyone to get their hands on a remote control airplane, helicopter, or what most people would call a drone, unless they get licensed first. That isn't a registration: licensing. I don't even like the registration requirements the FAA has recently proposed. However I'm a practical person and soon a giant backlash is going to come and it will sweep up the good [youtube.com] and bad [youtube.com] pilots. Whats worse people are engaging in conversations about "fixing" this drone problem and they have no clue what they are talking about.

Some ideas I've seen: Put prop guards on it so the props can't ever do this again. Nope that won't work on anything but the smallest devices and it is also unproductive weight for most flying. Performance flyers will clip the things off because they are used to modifying their gear all the time. You probably won't find them in a park though so you'll never know about it. Only allow small drones. This won't really work either: it's not like the eyeball is going to weigh the drone at the moment the propeller strikes it. The micro and nano sized drones can destroy an eyeball too. I doubt if the registration requirements are going to help much.

Any flying remote control device is dangerous. Hobbyists know this and the injury rate has remained low considering we all deal with unreliable machines carrying liquid fuel or explosive batteries, one or more blenders attached, and a horsepower or more on tap, being controlled with a device that itself has a lot of single points of failure. As a pilot to be surprised that one of them falls out of the air is irresponsible. Unfortunate things happen but this one never should have.

A few days before this event I published four rules of quadcopter safety as a joke in my journal. Here is a copy of some common sense things that would have stopped this from happening. From what I can tell the person was also flying illegally as the machine shouldn't have been that close to any person even if they are a baby.

1. All quadcopters are always dangerous.
2. Remove the throttle lock or arm the craft only immediately before takeoff.
3. Be sure of your airspace and what is under it.
4. Never point the camera of your quadcopter at something you are not prepared to defend yourself in court against.

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