You can t really blame the watchdogs of our federal skies for being worried about DOBB – Drone Operators Behaving Badly.
If we haven t yet entered the crisis stage, with near-misses and all sorts of sky-high mishaps by private drone enthusiasts, then we re damn close. As Reuters reported, reports of unauthorized drone missions have surged this past year, and the obvious top-of-mind worry among regulators and law enforcement is that one of these drone-flying knuckleheads will accidentally bring down a commercial aircraft or, worse, bring one down on purpose.
Check this out for starters:
Now the federal government and its local police partners are preparing to fight back. Reuters quotes sources familiar with the matter who say agencies are working with state and local police forces to develop high-tech systems to protect vulnerable sites :
Although the research aimed at tracking and disabling drones is at an early stage, there has been at least one field test.
Last New Year s Eve, New York police used a microwave-based system to try to track a commercially available drone at a packed Times Square and send it back to its operator, according to one source involved in the test.
The previously unreported test, which ran into difficulty because of interference from nearby media broadcasts, was part of the nationwide development effort that includes the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department, the source said.
The sources were not authorized to speak about the effort and declined to be identified.
Help is urgently needed. How urgently? Well, Scientific America reported recently that while the FAA earlier this year did introduce new regulations over the commercial and some personal deployment of drones (think movie producers looking for that over-the-beach shot, or realtors wanting to show off that sprawling multi-acre estate from the air), the rules are, well, sort of not enough for the budding problem out there.
Sure, they limit drone flights to around 150 meters and require the operator to maintain a line of sight with the craft. But the room for mischief and error and downright insanity by reckless Americans who got one of these $200 babies for Christmas is immense. Consider this list of bad things done recently by drone pilots:
August 2013—A drone capturing footage for a production company abruptly tilted and crashed into the crowd at the Great Bull Run (a day of music, drinking—and actual bull runs) in Virginia. Four or five spectators suffered minor injuries, .
August 2013—A drone operator, hired to capture video of a wedding, accidentally flew it .
April 2014A photographer was piloting his drone in order to film the Endure Batavia Triathlon in Geraldton, Australia. But he lost control of the drone—which wound up , causing minor injuries.
December 2014TGI Fridays restaurants thought it would be cute to fly a drone carrying mistletoe over diners heads. A drone operator at a Brooklyn restaurant, however, trying to demonstrate how much control he had, attempted to land the drone on a reporter s hand—but the reporter flinched, sending the drone into the face of her photographer and .
Mistletoe!?!?!?! What the hell is going on over our heads, America!?!?!?
All we can do now is hope the feds figure out how to rein in the madness before it all rains down on our heads.
Credit: Photo of Manie Kohn and his drone, courtesy of Manie Kohn
