Car nearly hits cyclist .... Wait no, the car actually hits cyclist dozens of times per day...
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Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
61–70 of 167 posts
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#62Car nearly hits cyclist .... Wait no, the car actually hits cyclist dozens of times per day...
The rule of thumb on newspaper statistics: common risks are boring, therefore not news. (Note that "car hits car" is too boring even for you to mention ;))
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#63Has anyone actually been killed by a non military drone yet?
I haven't read the FAA regulations in extreme detail, but from what I've surmised, RC copters would count as needing to be registered. So if that makes it a drone -- and I don't see why not, as it is an unmanned aircraft and whether it had a camera or not doesn't seem to matter to the FAA -- then yes, people have been killed by them. I remember in Brooklyn a couple years back a teenager was killed quite gruesomely in…
Yep, the FAA does not distinguish between an RC aircraft and a drone.
There's also been accidents with larger UAVs: http://www.suasnews.com/2012/05/15515/schiebel-s-100-crash-k...
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#64I think the title should be updated a bit here. When I read "drone nearly hits" I imagined it flying by and getting to close on the way passed. The video shows it crashing to the ground with some force. It isn't clear whether this is under its own power (so an issue in directional control by either a pilot error or equipment fault) or due to loss of power (so it hit the ground due to gravity). Either way it could hav…
> Either way it could have done the skier quite some damage Not either way. If it was the pilot's mistake then yes, but if power was lost then the blades would not have had much force anymore. They can cause very serious cuts when propelled, but half a second after losing power they hardly have any momentum left. Tripping the skier over would likely have been the worst of it, if a loss of power was the case. Either w…
He was taking part in a slalom race. These guys hit ridiculous speeds. "Tripping the skier over" could have had absolutely disastrous consequences.
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#65I used to fly remote control aeroplanes as a hobby. There's a really strong culture of having a licence and insurance before you're allowed to fly solo. You have to pass a test before you can get insurance, and there are more tests if you want to fly around spectators (stunt shows, etc). This seems to be completely missing in the drone community. I quizzed some drone enthusiasts about it and they responded with "meh"…
Why would you assume a major TV broadcaster wouldn't use sufficiently capable pilots and not have insurance? I would be shocked if they were not very well insured.
They may have taken some lessons from Uber and figured that uninsured contractors are a good option :).
I guess we'll find out as the investigation goes forward.
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#66A mandatory security parachute could avoid this scenario. To ban drones is the simple way out.
Of all the things that can go wrong, falling out of the sky is one of the least of the problems. A bulky parachute is extra weight so people are going to avoid building it in, and besides that, I doubt it's going to help in most situations.
E.g.: Who decides to deploy it? The pilot? In that case, signal loss or interference might get in the way. Or does the multirotor decide for itself when to deploy? In that case it could decide to do so at the wrong moment, which can be just as dangerous. You'd need safeguards against this safeguard.
The main danger of these machines are the blades, not it falling out of the sky without inertia in the props.
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#67I think the title should be updated a bit here. When I read "drone nearly hits" I imagined it flying by and getting to close on the way passed. The video shows it crashing to the ground with some force. It isn't clear whether this is under its own power (so an issue in directional control by either a pilot error or equipment fault) or due to loss of power (so it hit the ground due to gravity). Either way it could hav…
> Either way it could have done the skier quite some damage Not either way. If it was the pilot's mistake then yes, but if power was lost then the blades would not have had much force anymore. They can cause very serious cuts when propelled, but half a second after losing power they hardly have any momentum left. Tripping the skier over would likely have been the worst of it, if a loss of power was the case. Either w…
A drone like this that has lost power is essentially a flying brick. If you get hit by a brick, you generally suffer damage. Add to that the fact that the guy had accumulated some serious momentum, and getting hit by this drone could easily turn into career-ending, or even life-ending injury.
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#68I used to fly remote control aeroplanes as a hobby. There's a really strong culture of having a licence and insurance before you're allowed to fly solo. You have to pass a test before you can get insurance, and there are more tests if you want to fly around spectators (stunt shows, etc). This seems to be completely missing in the drone community. I quizzed some drone enthusiasts about it and they responded with "meh"…
There isn't really a drone community. With RC, almost everybody involved was an enthusiast who would meet with other enthusiasts. Anybody interested, even for a few minutes, can get a drone. This is the RC world's "Eternal September".
Ha, that is true. I had to join a club before I even knew what to buy...
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#69Bad risk taking drone pilots are incredibly irritating, because they will ruin it for the decent pilots.
This is very relevant to your comment. "In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error, also known as the correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics (personality) to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation rather than considering the situation's external factors." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attributi…
It's not just that. It happens always when a particular thing becomes of interest to the general population. Suddenly, domain-geeks are being swamped by normals who have little interest or experience in the domain itself, and they make stupid mistakes that sometimes end up being corrected with law.
Happened to programming too.
Re: Skier almost hit by camera drone in World Cup slalom
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh. Times have changed. In many cities you are the idiot if you are in a car.
Times are changing, thankfully; but it's not possible to just revert a century of car-centered city planning. This will still take decades :(
Of course it's possible. We reverted millennia of pedestrian centered city planning in a century; I'm sure we can figure out how to reverse the damage done to cities over a single century.