Interesting report from the FAA. Their calculations determine that a 0.55 lb/250 gram drone would be lethal falling at terminal velocity and striking someone in the head.
Interesting that what started as an urgent call for a solution to the perceived serious problem of recreational drones flying close to airliners seems to have come down to sorting out the risk of people on the ground being injured by falling drones and this is the reason they have decided that drones weighing more than 250g must be registered.
btw .. they didn't say that
a 0.55 lb/250 gram drone would be lethal falling at terminal velocity and striking someone in the head.
They say:
an object with a kinetic energy level of 80 Joules (or approximately 59 foot-pounds) has a 30% probability of being lethal when striking a person in the head.
So now the DOT/FAA would require owners of drones >250g to get a number and put it on their toy aircraft. But what does this do to solve the original "problem"?
Incidentally they calculate the probability of a fatal event caused by a falling drone >250g to be less than 1 ground fatality for every 20,000,000 flight hours (that's 2283 flight years!)
So far there have been no fatalities caused by falling drones.
Perhaps they should look at something really dangerous .... like baseball.
Here are some actual recorded fatality statistics for baseball since 1862
Beanings –
288 (includes one in a major league game and 11 in minor league games)
Other pitched ball fatalities –
109 (includes one in a minor league game)
Thrown ball fatalities –
127 (includes one in a minor league game)
Bat fatalities –
83
Batted ball fatalities –
189 (includes one in a minor league game)
Collision fatalities –
101 (includes four in minor league games)
Weather-related fatalities –
80 (includes one in a minor league game)
Fatalities due to field conditions –
87