If you want to get all flapped up about something, over 32,000 people died in car crashes in the US in 2013, and cars are still legal, in spite of killing way more people than drones.
Well, to be fair, that's out of an absolutely astronomical number of passenger-miles, and the rate has dropped dramatically over the years. And, cars have very clear utilitarian uses for many people. Drones are either toys with no intrinsic value, or commercial operations that could reasonably be regulated.
BTW, I tend to agree with your implied point about laws/licensing associated with drones. There's no problem in the world that cannot be made worse by government regulation. Once the current fad fades, I think RC aircraft are a reasonable model for community control. It's just a matter of how many "incidents" there are before that happens.
Check out "Do you speak model airplane?" by Dave Thornburg and note the hysteria over FF gas models, the AMA is playing the same game now. All gas models from the early 30's on were supposed to be "licensed" by the AMA, no license, you are violating the law. They made the law and that resolved the issue, even though only a tiny fraction of gas models were ever actually licensed. Same with RC, until very recently, you were supposed to get an FCC license to operate your transmitter, but only a very tiny fraction of people flying RC ever did that, and early on, some manufacturers sold 10 x more RC sets (on illegal frequencies) than there were license holders in the country. No one got tossed in jail for illegal transmitters.
They are making a big noise about regulating it through the "community" to satisfy people calling for regulation - not to actually do much regulation.
Brett
Topic: Another drone incident (Read 2013 times)