The pilot of the Phantom that crashed on a Manhattan street earlier this month has been arrested, ABC reports:
David Zablidowsky of Brooklyn has been charged with "Reckless Endangerment" for allegedly losing control of a helicopter drone at "an unreasonable height creating a substantial risk of serious physical injury".
Comments
Here's a rather professional crew (National Geographic) losing control and crashing a DJI S800 in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJrT7cnTCSM
+1, Steven, that was really rude, to say the least. People, whether you "like" or "dislike" cops is not going to have a thing to do with whether or not you will be able to fly in the future or under what sort of rules and laws you will be doing so. Just view the cops as a force of nature, like the wind. It's what generates that wind that matters, and that's often a combination of a dumbass pilot and the ever-hungry media. We can't do anything direct about the media, let alone about cops, so let's stay after the dumbasses.
My belief is these forums are for encouragement, sharing of knowledge and the general goodness of UAVs, not causing offence.
It may not concern or be bother you, but please be mindful who your audience may be before making such comments. The simple insertion of the word "Some" at the very beginning of your post would not cause such offence.
People join the police force because they whanna be bullies. People buy a multirotor because they whanna have fun and take pictures.
This is a generalisation but you shouldn't think to highly of the cops. Cops are like guard dogs and don't tend to recriminate too well. I have a coup of friends in the force and from time to time they try the act. We get on really well but they do like to bully.
If the rules are clear, issues are easier for them and us. Sometimes them are us, so yes some straight forward rules would help. There are rules for this stuff but they aren't clear or simple and they're not usually outlined to police. Maybe AMA could get something rolling on this because it going to get really busy.
Cheers.
Good bust! The hobby and related industry has basically failed so far to police itself, despite the efforts by a few individuals on this forum and other places to generate within it a safety culture. While there may be the occasional overzealous cop applying reckless behavior laws to something that's more silly than dangerous, these laws in general are useful and necessary. They are applied, for example, to things like someone riding downhill through a crowd in a shopping cart, or randomly throwing flowerpots off of a tenth-story balcony. Unless we want our hobby micro-managed by a byzantine meter-high stack of laws (a la FAA), then we should welcome the application of a nice simple law like this by the cops. It won't take them long to figure out what is and isn't recklessly dangerous. Consider "reckless driving" which can be applied in most places at the whim of an officer's judgement. Cops (and prosecutors) don't like being made to look like fools and don't like pointless paperwork, so you don't see people being cited for reckless driving for trivialities. Just as current privacy/trespassing/stalking laws already cover many potential misuses of our aircraft, these endangerment laws can perhaps rid us of individuals who just don't get it and are thus dangerous not only to others physically but to the survival of the hobby. I know, I know, we would all rather live in a word populated by sensible people with no cops needed, but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
The Phantom is sort of nice to fly around people because it doesn't look as ominous as my home-built copters. I find that people are super friendly and interested when they see it. The police seemed the most interested....they basically stopped the procession to talk about it lol. I took the time to throw that footage together because a couple of them wanted to see what it was like. The gave me their email addresses and stuff.
I generally don't enjoy being around cops (I work in law enforcement so I'm around them all the time), but the Phantom sort of brought a bunch of us together. Pretty cool. And corny but true.
Today is a special day here, and I am sure people were really happy about seeing themselves filmed from above.
I thought about doing something similar for a few parades in the past but I couldn't take the risk.
I love doing things as in this video but I won't due to the risk factor. If something goes wrong that Good times may turn to bad and I would want that on me...
Glad everything went well for you...
Made it out today for the veterans day parade. Was going to bring my 550 but wanted to screw with the new Phantom. The biggest thing I noticed was how much I've gotten used to flying with a gimbal...filming without one is really tough without a lot of practice. And I'm really out of practice.
I flew it right on top of everybody's head out there. The kids, the police, the military guys, and even the Mayor for a brief few seconds. Everybody loved it as usual--as you can see in the footage.
Good times.
And the biggest thing is not fines or jail but a lawsuit from someone hit. It would basically ruin you.
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