Re: The Bridge Run, the Police and our Hyper Sensitive Cultu
derrickduff said:
Visioneer said:
You're overlooking the possibility that it could be used to deliver something other than "falling parts".
I was hoping for more of your input Visioneer. The Constitution and specifically The Bill of Rights come to mind. There's an equal argument for why people shouldn't own assault rifles (or any fire arms) for their own enjoyment. Every other month or so for the past few years there's been some sort of public shooting.
I don't want to start a gun control argument
Yes, please, let's not.
derrickduff said:
but that is why I find this fear of remote control aircraft irrational. There is so much fear causing illogical knee-jerk reactions over something new.
I'm very reluctant to get into quoting the Constitution and Bill of Rights in any of these discussions for two reasons, 1) very few people have actually read them and, more importantly, 2) even if someone has read them, an individual's interpretation is pointless - we have some 225 years of case law "interpreting" their meaning for us, and I suspect no one has all of that on the tip of their tongue. That's one reason why lawyers take months (if not years) to research their cases before going to trial, and why we have courts for appeal - they address not only the facts of a case but also what the law means ... since we've come to learn that, according to our courts, the words don't always mean what they seem to say.
You may have inadvertently answered your own question here, at least partially. The proliferation of guns is a done deal - that cat got out of the bag years ago. The "irrational fear" of remote control aircraft may unconsciously be driven by the notion that if they're left alone now, by the time we conjure up some reasonable regulations, they will have proliferated and evolved to the point that they can't be stopped -
"Apparently we didn't see coming what has transpired as a result of allowing relatively free gun ownership, let's not repeat that with anything else." Here's an unsettling thought, since guns ultimately always seem to get a pass, I'll mount a gun on my drone and then any "drone laws" won't apply. Ludicrous? I hope so.
Again, we don't want to make this thread about guns but as you raised the analogy it put a question in my mind; what if someone shows up at an event like this with a weapon in plain view. My uneducated impression is that there can be no law against it. Yet it's hard for me to imagine such person would go unchallenged.
derrickduff said:
Presumably, most of us purchased a phantom to get a camera in the air and to share the images and video. It is not only for my own enjoyment, but for everybody I share with.
True enough, but that's still probably only enjoyment for tens (hundreds at the most) of people versus the safety of thousands at a big event.
Visioneer said:
Drunk driving IS illegal and presumably would have been stopped if detected beforehand
derrickduff said:
It's not just drunk drivers. Every year thousands of people are struck and killed by vehicles. I don't know of a single death caused by a remote control aircraft.
The point is valid but it implies we should wait for a "drone" to actually kill someone before we contemplate forced precautions. That's a tough sell.
I'd venture to say that a significant majority of the laws we have in this country were passed after somebody did something that turned out badly for someone else's property or person. And in many of these cases the bad outcome could have been predicted if the actor had given some serious advance thought to "what's the worst that could happen" ... but he/she didn't (or blew off concern for others) ... and somebody else had to pay a price for the rest of us to be educated and subsequently protected. As long as you're not the person paying the price, no problem. I'm guessing that if you were at a public event and somebody else's "drone" fell out of the sky and took a chunk out of your kid's ear, your reaction would not be, "that's life". Is that likely to happen, no ... could it happen, yes. The point is do you want somebody else making the decision regards what's an acceptable risk to put your kid at? And everything has degrees - one aircraft in a sparsely populated park - very unlikely, twenty aircraft in the vicinity (within fly away, pilot error, or mechanical failure distance) of thousands - the odds go up).
Visioneer said:
You need to challenge yourself with the task of figuring out how to best ensure the SAFETY of EVERYONE in the area of a huge event with limited resources, rather than focusing solely on how to protect the RIGHTS of a HANDFUL of people. It's a ridiculous assumption to think you have the resources to do it all ... something has to be sacrificed.
derrickduff said:
This is the heart of the matter, security over freedom. And from here it's all opinion and we'll have to agree to disagree. I can't get on board with fear trumping freedom.
I'd don't have an issue with this as a generic statement, but in the context of this example the more accurate statement is fear for the many trumping freedom of the few. It puts a different perspective on it. I'll concede this revised statement doesn't really apply if limited to your Phantom which we know is not loaded with explosives ... the safety of the one or two people it could possibly injure (very unlikely) shouldn't trump your freedom to fly it if done so with reasonable precaution ... but the authorities don't know it's "safe". There should be a better solution to an outright ban, but it's going to require their being educated in concert with their capabilities to ensure it is safe.
I'm not sure we're really disagreeing on most of this. Knowing what I know about the Phantom, I absolutely agree that you should have been allowed to fly it where and when you indicated you would (after all, you were checked out by LEO). But I also recognize that the authorities don't know what I know and likely don't have the resources to "clear" every unknown device they might encounter in an event of this kind. I'm simply trying to see both sides. Without more info regards their knowledge, direction, and resources I can't say that they had any realistic alternatives. That having been said, it's unlikely that they'll do anything different in the future unless you or someone else can help with their knowledge or resources.
The one minor point we may disagree on is whether or not the fear referenced herein is irrational, though I suspect it's really an issue of semantics. Knowing what we know, fearing the Phantom is irrational - there's nothing about it to be feared (perhaps absent scopophobia). But if one's primary exposure to "drones" is of the military variety (or largely as portrayed as "bad" by the media), it might be entirely rational. Just a thought - perception is everything.