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Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

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Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#31

Post by angersock »

yeukhon wrote: post #27
retrogradeorbit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a RC plane flying hobbiest my greatest fear is from over reaction to fools like this one. Yes he did the wrong thing. And he's been charged. The present laws seem fine. The big danger is from over-reaction and then just a law outright banning all civilian use. This is my worst case scenario. When me and my friends fly it's a day trip. We travel to a remote location, or a large open flying field. We don't fly over…

Please before raging at me look at what I said. Flying in a dense area is dangerous. Flying in a rural area (or if you want, open field somewhere remote) is fine. So you took the wrong direction. My comment is not foolish at all. We just need to ban in the city. Even 100 ft is dangerous. This is not foolish. And importing the argument "ban driving" is certainly foolish because we do have regulations on driving. You c…

Very simply, the odds of a drone falling out of nowhere and beaning me on the head are quite small, even if once they become popular.

Now, banning drones above a few hundred feet in a landing path for an airport, sure, but let's not kid ourselves that we're significantly helping anyone else.

Regulating urban drone usage by hobbyists doesn't do anything significant to help, and just dissuades people from having fun and learning.

Besides, you're not going to stop the cops or people with enough money/pull from doing it anyways. I'd rather not let the .gov cite FAA regs when nailing protesters, for example.

Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#32

Post by pak »

nknighthb wrote: post #30
yeukhon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please before raging at me look at what I said. Flying in a dense area is dangerous. Flying in a rural area (or if you want, open field somewhere remote) is fine. So you took the wrong direction. My comment is not foolish at all. We just need to ban in the city. Even 100 ft is dangerous. This is not foolish. And importing the argument "ban driving" is certainly foolish because we do have regulations on driving. You c…

> we do have regulations on driving You don't want regulations on RC aircraft, you want to ban them. But you know nothing about them. I have a small RC helicopter, I could run it into a baby's face at full power and it'd barely tickle. You've gotten your ideas from media sensationalism of extreme incidents. I could just as easily use your arguments to say "ban bicycles" because someone fell off one and died, or ran i…

You're not quantifying correctly. Car accidents and bicycle accidents are currently more common than RC aircraft accidents partly because RC use is so uncommon. If you throw in a denominator of operator-hours, the picture likely changes. You should also account for the foresight and preventability afforded to potential victims. From the perspective of a pedestrian or property owner on the ground, it is a lot easier to anticipate and avoid an accident with something moving horizontally than something falling out of the sky. I can avoid stepping into a crosswalk if I anticipate a taxi will run the red light. I can't anticipate something falling on my head.

There are many reasons you might want to ban RC in an urban area besides safety. There's reasonable expectations of privacy for example; I don't think residents of apartment buildings would be amused by drones with cameras tapping on their windows. There's noise considerations. If there are drones flying unexpectedly between buildings and down streets, it's unsightly and distracting. Let's keep them in the suburbs or rural areas where less people will be affected by these externalities.

Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#33

Post by angersock »

robbyt wrote: post #4

There are things you should do differently in densely populated areas like NYC. Flying consumer drones around without any permission or training is just not a good idea.

Yeah, gonna have to disagree with you here.

You know how you get training? By doing, by practicing.

There's no need to nanny people--if they're not careful and if they end up causing damage, deal with it then; otherwise just be cool.

Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#34

Post by robbyt »

angersock wrote: post #33
robbyt wrote: post #4

There are things you should do differently in densely populated areas like NYC. Flying consumer drones around without any permission or training is just not a good idea.

Yeah, gonna have to disagree with you here. You know how you get training? By doing, by practicing. There's no need to nanny people--if they're not careful and if they end up causing damage, deal with it then; otherwise just be cool.

Yes, but go outside of the city to practice where you don't risk hurting other people.

Handguns are also illegal in NYC- if you want to get handgun training you need to go outside of the city where people won't get hurt.

Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#35

Post by nknighthb »

pak wrote: post #32
nknighthb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we do have regulations on driving You don't want regulations on RC aircraft, you want to ban them. But you know nothing about them. I have a small RC helicopter, I could run it into a baby's face at full power and it'd barely tickle. You've gotten your ideas from media sensationalism of extreme incidents. I could just as easily use your arguments to say "ban bicycles" because someone fell off one and died, or ran i…

You're not quantifying correctly. Car accidents and bicycle accidents are currently more common than RC aircraft accidents partly because RC use is so uncommon. If you throw in a denominator of operator-hours, the picture likely changes. You should also account for the foresight and preventability afforded to potential victims. From the perspective of a pedestrian or property owner on the ground, it is a lot easier t…

How do you anticipate a bicycle hitting you from behind?

> There's reasonable expectations of privacy for example

There is nothing reasonable about an expectation of privacy when your curtains are open.

> There's noise considerations.

More ignorance, more overreaction. Many RC aircraft are nearly silent, and we have noise ordinances for the rest. But I promise, you won't hear most RC aircraft over the din in Manhattan anyway.

> unsightly

According to whom?

> distracting

Oh look, an actual problem to be addressed. Why not talk about that? Oh, right, because it's just a post-hoc rationalization for an initial knee-jerk reaction.

> Let's keep them in the suburbs or rural areas where less people will be affected by these externalities.

You mean where the majority of people, especially children, will have no opportunity to play, experiment, and learn.

We already have laws to control the externalities. The NYPD is investigating this guy for reckless endangerment. That should be more than enough.

Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#36

Post by reustle »

whyenot wrote: post #25

There was a teenager in New York who died recently when his RC helicopter sliced off the top of his head[1]. Flying these things in heavily populated areas is going to be an issue, whether there is a human being at the controls or it is some future autonomous "tacocopter." [1] http://nypost.com/2013/09/05/man-decapitated-by-remote-contr...

That was a much more powerful helicopter, not a simple consumer quadrocopter. The blades on my ar.drone spin just fast enough to sting a bit when it catches a finger.

Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#37

Post by potatolicious »

baddox wrote: post #23
yeukhon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, I think either way this activity should be banned. Though the activity should be allowed in some rural area with permits. Especially in a dense, metropolitan city like NYC, flying a robotic copter or drone can pose dangerous. especially if everyone were to fly one.

> To me, I think either way this activity should be banned. Define "this activity." I hope you don't mean all flying of remote control aircraft, which is a decades-old and historically extremely safe hobby.

"This activity" = "the flying of powerful RC aircraft (i.e., at substantial risk of major injury if it collides into a person - it's a quad carrying a GoPro, not a supermarket RC heli), by an unqualified operator (watch the feed from the quad, the guy crashes it five times into buildings before losing control permanently), in an area where there is a guaranteed swarm of people directly below the flight path".

My understanding is that RC aircraft as a hobby, up until recently, has been small enough and hard enough to get into that most newbies get schooled by the old-timers, and as such learn proper safety and how to not be a complete cockup.

With the advent of incredibly cheap RC aircraft, it seems more and more people are getting into the hobby who have no idea WTF they should/shouldn't be doing, have no one to teach them, and aren't aware of their own ignorance. If RC aircraft becomes much more popular than it currently is, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if hard regulations become the norm.

Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#39

Post by robomartin »

I am glad this happened. People like this guy are lacking something very basic: common sense.

As someone for whom model airplanes have been a life-long hobby that I am now passing on to my children I am very ciponcerned about the idiots playing with these "drones". These are the guys who are going to bone those of us who conduct these activities with common sense as well as respect and consideration for the safety of others.

I recently ran into this at a "fun fly" organized by our club. These are rvents where modelers come from all over to enjoy a day of flying --usually with a theme, such as helicopters, flat planes, gliders, scale, etc.

This guy showed-up with a plane equipped with GPS and FPV (onboard video with downlink). He proceeded to fly the thing over people, roads and even over a local campground half a mile away. All of this while I and other club members went from asking for this to stop to almost yelling and screaming at the guy. As things went he ended-up crashing the plane. Thankfully this happened well away of people and property.

Yes, these people are idiots and they need to suffer the consequences of their actions when warranted.

Re: Brooklyn man arrested for flying drone over Manhattan

#40

Post by vdaniuk »

robomartin wrote: post #39

I am glad this happened. People like this guy are lacking something very basic: common sense. As someone for whom model airplanes have been a life-long hobby that I am now passing on to my children I am very ciponcerned about the idiots playing with these "drones". These are the guys who are going to bone those of us who conduct these activities with common sense as well as respect and consideration for the safety of…

You say idiots, I say your cognitive bias is rearing its reality distortion field. Read up on fundamental attribution error and you'll see what's wrong with your comment.
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