Head-On Car Crash - Road Closed

[MikesTooLz]

This weekend they closed down state road 82 in Lehigh Florida and were rerouting all the traffic onto a side road.
We saw a news van trying to get footage through the tree's and broadcasting live. We deiced to try and get a closer look with the new Vision+.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxbKSZRMWLE[/youtube]

 

[r0ot5]

I love the shots it's possible to get with the PV2+. Can't wait to test it out over here.

 

[Geoffdb]

Nice vid, bro.
If you wanna fly in the Miami area sometime, shoot me a message. I'm out almost daily!

Jb

 

[EskimoPie]

Very cool... 2 questions, how clearly were you able to see those power wires via the FPV? And did you try to sell the footage to the news van people? :lol:

 

[Dronut]

Sorry, but am I the only one who finds filming of accident scenes disgusting? I know news stations are doing the same. But that doesn't make it any less objectionable from my perspective.

 

[doug86]

Remember that line from Jurassic Park? "You guys always just do something because it's possible. You never stop to wonder if you should." (paraphrasing here)

I'm not saying you should not have done this, but a few things come to mind that might be a good topic for discussion. First of all, I wonder what that policeman was thinking if/when he saw your Phantom. Furthermore, as these videos get distributed around the net, on YouTube and Facebook, will it cause the less informed to have a negative knee jerk reaction to drones in general?

I think that private citizens should have the same information gathering rights as a news organization does. So, your video is really no different than what a news chopper could have gotten. But, the general public may not agree with me. People tend to see the formal Media outlets as somehow more legitimate than just some guy with a quadcopter.

I invite the members of this forum to chime in, and lets discuss how we will proceed as quad pilots/videographers in order to minimize the negative reactions and potential regulations that will result if we're not careful.

Now that I have had my new P2V+ for 6 days, I find myself seeing all sort of stuff to shoot. "Oh, wouldn't it be cool to launch the quad here?"

Anyway Mike, I'm not objecting to your video, but it does beg some questions. There may not be any quick answers, but discussion is usually a good thing.... usually.
d86

 

[canadavenyc]

Discussion is always good. Nothing good comes from banning discussion.

For whatever it's worth, I find the idea of filming the wreckage of a head-on crash horrifying and pointless. You know it's a head-on crash. You know what it means--car wreckage strewn all over a road. What's the point of filming it? It seems to me that the only purpose of showing the aftermath of a head-on collision is to satisfy our prurient interest in picturing the violence and death that resulted from it. If someone else can point out a different and more positive use for that type of video, I'm all ears.

And I agree that this type of video, if seen by someone who knew nothing about drones, once they were informed that someone with a drone shot this video, would make them more likely to view drone flights in a negative light. There's just too much of a "look, isn't this cool?? You can almost see the bodies, even from up here!" factor to it. I know that's not what the videographer in this case was thinking, but that's what someone ignorant of drones might be likely to suspect was the motivation.

 

[MikesTooLz]

Very cool... 2 questions, how clearly were you able to see those power wires via the FPV? And did you try to sell the footage to the news van people? :lol:

Keep in mind that this crash had happened about 3+ hour's prior to me arriving, no one was still inside of either of the cars.


Yes I could clearly see the power lines on the FPV screen on my phone, I did not want to get to close to them for several reasons. In the video it looks like I'm much closer than I actually was. We walked over to where I had line of sight with the phantom and the power lines and I was probably about 20 feet above them. I also did not want to distract or disturb the officer, as I could see that he was taking pictures and still doing something. Once he wen back into his car I decided to do a quick fly over to get a shot from the other side of the cars before putting the phantom away.

As for your second question about selling the video to the news van people, I knew I couldn't sell the footage to them so that was out of the question. I did however go over and ask if they had a business card or something so I could email them a link once I uploaded to YouTube. They said they already had enough footage and didn't need it.



One last thing to note, we pulled off on the side of the road to fly the phantom. When returning to our car there was what seemed to be an under cover police car stopped right behind ours. However they never got out of the car and never said anything to use as we loaded the phantom into its carrying case and placed it back in the trunk of our car.