DRONES

‘Drones’. The word sends a shiver down the backs of many people, and rightly so. Drones have recently become notorious for their lethal activities in the Middle East, and people are afraid that they will be used at home. In the United States of America, citizens are becoming aware of the increasing use of ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ by law enforcements agencies. This is leading to a lot of propositions for new legislations, and while these may seem good at first, what does this really mean? These legislations would negatively affect the rising community of drone hobbyists, who use drones purely for their own entertainment or for filming purposes. These people would be stripped of their hobby, while doing nothing wrong. While these laws are just being lobbied for in the United States of America at the moment, they are raising awareness about drones in other countries, such as New Zealand. If America passes laws about drones, New Zealand will most likely follow. Is this really what we want?

In the United States of America people worried that drones will be used around their homes. While these concerns seem reasonable, a lot of people don’t realise that the drones flying around their neighbourhood won’t be the lethal MQ-9 Reapers (see image below) used in Afghanistan, but rather smaller so called ‘multi-copters’ (see image below). They are nothing more than large model helicopters with camera systems. There is a huge difference between these drones, and people should be made aware of that. However, the people who do know about this difference believe that their right for privacy is not being taken into account, and along with others are calling for an outright ban on drones. This is a very drastic measure and should be stopped. I agree that concerns over privacy should be taken into account, but banning drones is a step too far. This would also ban remote control models, such as the Parrot A.R Drone, which is a remote control helicopter designed to be controlled by a Smartphone, and is mainly used by kids. Why should a whole category of toys and models be wiped from the market, just because people are afraid of military drones? There are also a lot of non-military uses for drones; during the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a drone was used to assess damages safely without endangering human lives. Environmental and forestry services also use drones for collecting research data and for search and rescue. These are all legitimate uses for drones which would be affected by these laws.

There is also another group of people who use drones: the hobbyist community. These people build small drones purely for their own entertainment and would be stripped of their hobby by these legislations. These hobbyist drones can range from small remote control helicopters or planes with cameras attached to larger models with fully functioning waypoint and autopilot systems. While this may frighten some people at first, there is nothing inherently threatening about this. So far, the model community has been generally left to police themselves, with a few regulations to govern them. This has actually worked very well so far, with people using common sense and flying their models over large open spaces, and not doing low passes over their neighbourhood. Of course, there are always those few people who ignore caution and do dangerous things, and sadly these are the ones we hear about. However, this can apply to everything, as generally everyone drives carefully, but there are always those few people who ignore common sense and drive under the influence of alcohol, and this is the cause of a lot of the car crashes we hear about in the news. So really, why should this community of DIY drone makers have their hobby taken away from them, just because police forces use the same technology? This is like saying kids shouldn’t own walkie-talkies because the police force uses them, and because those kids might hear someone else’s transmission. I share peoples’ concern for privacy, but I can think of a better solution than banning them: