I thought it was pointless, too, until I saw that video taken from a drone that hovered right above a passenger jet as it was landing at KLAS.

(Sorry I can't search for the video at work — no YT allowed.)

The thing is, these laws are really, really hard to enforce at the federal level and in general municipal and state governments already do an efficient job (and are happy to collect the fines from rich folks with a hobby) executing on local laws.

It's really quite unnecessary.

One is a fine. The other is a few years in prison. It has quite a bit of a deterrent effect. It won't get everyone, but it will cut down on the number of people who try stunts like that.

But drones are hot so why not pass a complex bill with a complex mandate to satisfy regulators itching to pounce on drone hobbyists.

Frankly I assumed the behavior was already criminal under Federal law.[1] Anybody who thought it was okay to buzz airplanes is almost certainly not thinking about consequences.

[1] I'm not completely convinced it's not, FWIW, but I'm satisfied it's not covered by the above, which is the only relevant Federal criminal statute I could find. I'd bet it's already illegal in many states, though.

What changes people's habits is the likelihood of punishment, not the severity of it.

Germany has much lower punishments for murder, but around 90% of murder investigations are solved.

Which of these do you think is the greater deterrence?

Also, now that Germany has...diversity...the crime rate went up pretty significantly.

So I would say, all in all, that homogenous populations are the greatest deterrence, followed by the magnitude of punishment being significantly more important at a societal level, though the risk of getting caught dominates the thought process for regulatory/low-punishment crimes.

When punishments are so disproportionately high a good chunk of the ofenders will stop caring. The preventative effect is gone, it’s more an incentive to escalate the crime to a level where it matches the punishment.

Also… mighty fast 'drone', to nearly accelerate to the speed of a landing jet. I don't think they make quadcopters quite that brisk yet.

We must be thinking of different encounter videos. In the one I saw, the drone didn’t move much. It sat in the flight path waiting for a jet to come by.

* Is that behavior already illegal under existing law?

* Do these new laws meaningfully address that behavior?

drones will eventually become so heavily licensed than anything outside of law enforcement, large news organizations, and politicians, will be restricted to the point of needing specialized parks just to enjoy them.

RC planes generally fall under 112-95 Section 336 which pretty much should work for drones

There is also a large community of builders and flyers [1], a network of clubs with actual airfields for the purpose, and a multi-million dollar insurance policy with membership.

Both the difficulty, the investment, and the training and peer pressure drastically reduces the number of participants who behave like asshats with their aircraft - to essentially zero.

With hobby drones, it is exactly the opposite -- just go buy some overgrown toy, and you can now put up in the air a device that with any of hundreds of failures of the device or pilot, can become a lethal projectile falling from the sky.

So, yes, serious requirements for anything over a few hundred grams is very reasonable[2].

[1] Academy of Model Aeronautics -- www.modelaircraft.org

[2](no, I'm not implying that the Govt automatically implements every reg in a reasonable & effective way, that could still end badly.)

[Edit: footnotes]

What would be important is forbid passengers planes from flying lower than 500ft.

  > What would be important is forbid passengers
  > planes from flying lower than 500ft. 

All the uncontrolled airports near me have to have drone advisories because nobody respects the 400' or line of sight regulations. I was landing on 35 at KTHV last year and nearly hit a drone at almost 900' turning to downwind to base.

There needs to be registration and regulation so that when you as a drone operator violate airspace regulations you can be punished.

I've been hit by an admittedly, fairly small drone. I't didn't hurt much at all, and the rotors didn't break the skin. I don't think they're like aerial blades, unless someone attaches some to one.

Those small toy drones? Yeah, might cut you a bit if the rotor cages aren't installed.

Something heavier like a DJI Phantom? Even if the blades don't cut you, those carry enough mass/speed to seriously injure.

Taking it to the absurd, if you get hit by one of those Reapers[0] you might get really seriously injured!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper

The relatively small city I live in gets this many or more animal-at-large reports on a daily basis which likely constitute a larger public safety threat than people flying their quads around throughout the entire country.

Where is the regulatory capture on leash laws?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class_(United_States)

That seems amazingly unlikely.

Erm, yes, if you ignore outside factors, they do. In fact, population growth has been a poster child to explain what exponential growth means for a while...

Drones interfering with manned aircraft or emergency services is already illegal.

And these things are transmitting radio in both directions, putting money into tracking and prosecuting people interfering with flights is completely achievable, without any change in law.

I suspect that this is more about protecting the interests of the commercial businesses by introducing licensing as a barrier to entry.

>The bill is supported by the Commercial Drone Alliance, a Washington-based advocacy group representing Alphabet’s Wing as well as other drone businesses.

100/day is on the same order as the amount of "doing X while black" or "teenagers looking sketchy" complaints that get called in to local police departments across the country. You just don't hear about them because they're thinly distributed to local PD's across the country..

If only 100 people/day are complaining to the government about something then that something isn't a problem.

The good drone operators didn't get control over the bad ones, so here we are.

What does this even mean? I buy a drone and now I'm responsible to go hunt down every idiot with a drone and tell him to knock it off? I'm sure that would be very effective. Definitely much more effective than the FAA regulations already in place that these people choose to ignore.

Instead, they spent their political capital fighting regulations instead of making good ones that the FAA could simply adopt wholesale.

Because of that, the FAA stepped in and now everybody gets to deal with the fallout.

[0]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/man-charged-... (Open in incognito if you run into the paywall) [1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/drone-crashes-ou...

I've heard people say that keeping the tankers away when a drone is in the same airspace is an overreaction, but those people are not thinking it through.

There are several factors that make fire-fighting flights very difficult for the pilots.

1. They are flying very low.

2. The air over and around large fires is often very turbulent.

3. The plane is heavily loaded, making it less nimble than normal, and making maneuvers put much more stress on the plane than they would on a less loaded plane.

The pilots are in a dangerous, stressful situation that requires their upmost concentration. Anything that distracts them is dangerous.

https://www.idahostatejournal.com/members/a-crashed-drone-co...

This one really pissed me off...

People have been killed by RC aircraft. I don't know if any accidents with quadcopters have caused injury (I'd assume having one fall on you from height wouldn't be fun), but there was a story a few years ago where a bloke killed himself with an RC helicopter.

https://nypost.com/2013/09/05/man-decapitated-by-remote-cont...