Colorado Lawmakers Want To Make It a Felony To Fly a Drone Over a Wildfire (thedrive.com) 203
Several Colorado lawmakers are trying to urge Congress to pass a bill that would make flying unmanned aerial vehicles over wildfires a felony, citing safety concerns. The Drive reports: On Wednesday, Senators Cory Gardner (R-Colorado), Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), and Representative Scott Tipton (R-Colorado) introduced the Securing Airspace For Emergency Responders Act, which would fine people for flying UAVs over wildfires without authorization, and potentially send them to jail for a year. "When an unauthorized drone flies over a wildfire, it poses a huge threat to aircraft working to suppress the fire and forces them to ground," said Tipton in a statement. Steve Hall, a spokesman for Colorado's office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, staunchly echoed that sentiment, claiming that firefighters face enough of a challenge navigating smoky and turbulent conditions while piloting firefighting aircraft, that adding rogue drones to the mix would only increase danger and hamper their efforts. On top of that, Hall explained that once an unauthorized drone is observed during a wildfire, firefighters ground their planes. The Denver Post first reported the news (paywalled).
This isn't hard (Score:1)
1) Police should shoot down the drone
2) Then find the pilot
3) Then the police should shoot the pilot
If you're enough of an asshole to fly over wildfires and put others at risk, you deserve to be shot.
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Bad call (Score:1)
"On top of that, Hall explained that once an unauthorized drone is observed during a wildfire, firefighters ground their planes. " This is an extremely stupid overreaction, and the safety-of-flight authorities who made it should be sentenced to one week confinement without food.
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Why is this an overreaction? You think people undertaking highly dangerous manoeuvres in difficult situations should accept additional unnecessary risk of indeterminate extent?
Perhaps you should write to the air safety authorities and let them know why they're wrong.
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All well and good... but will it stop them? (Score:1)
Encouraging drone bloggers to make a big deal about this sort of thing would probably be a lot more effective.
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Some people need to be threatened (Score:2)
Encouraging drone bloggers to make a big deal about this sort of thing would probably be a lot more effective.
That's important but you know as well as I do that there are too many self indulgent pricks who would just go do it anyway unless they can suffer actual consequences from their actions.
Simple Solution for Simple Problem (Score:2)
So give firefighting helicopters omnidirectional radio burst jammer, or a spoofer, or ultrasound emitters or any of the other anti-drone technology that doesn't require aiming.
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So give firefighting helicopters omnidirectional radio burst jammer, or a spoofer, or ultrasound emitters or any of the other anti-drone technology that doesn't require aiming.
Thank god helicopters don't use radio for communications. And that they do not have to coordinate with multiple aircraft servicing the same fire.
Idiotic "solutions" (Score:3)
So give firefighting helicopters omnidirectional radio burst jammer, or a spoofer, or ultrasound emitters or any of the other anti-drone technology that doesn't require aiming.
Really? Because people fighting fires don't have enough to do already? Now they are supposed to jam drones that they might not even see to keep safe from jackasses who are endangering lives and property for casual amusement?
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That's a great idea. Be sure to include frequencies that people may communicate over to call for help. That also solves the problem of having to help people and makes sure you can spend more time focusing on other problems.
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Because drones falling from the sky is what firefighters really need when fighting a fire.
It's the FAA, stupid. (Score:2)
I wonder what the FAA thinks about this. They're the ones who control the airspace. Not the State of Colorado.
About the only thing they could do is make it a felony to *take off* (e.g. use space that the state has jurisdiction over) somewhere near a fire.
And really, all fires of any import get a TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) within hours. Certainly as soon as it escalates out of local control. If you fly a drone (technically a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in the parlance) you are supposed to unde
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I wonder what the FAA thinks about this. They're the ones who control the airspace. Not the State of Colorado.
:facepalm:
Perhaps you should actually read the summary this time. You'd notice that these people who represent Colorado in the federal government are proposing a federal law.
What if drones are being used for search & res (Score:2)
What if the drones are being used to monitor the progress and the direction of the fire in order to protect a home-owner's property.
The truth is, they're treating a mere drone in the air as if it is a hostile terrorist attack. And to be frank, the risk is minimal. Forests are huge, and even if a drone is flying while a air tanker is dousing flames, the odds are very slim of the drone impacting the aircraft.
It should be a misdemeanor. Impact should be a felony.
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What if the drones are being used to monitor the progress and the direction of the fire in order to protect a home-owner's property.
First, that's the point of having "unauthorized" in the law. If the drone has a legitimate reason to be there, it can get authorized.
Second, your property is not more valuable than other people's property that gets destroyed because you grounded the firefighting aircraft just so you could have a look-see.
Third, your drone grounding the firefighting aircraft is a fantastic way to harm that home-owner's property, since you are interfering with the ability to fight the fire.
Fourth, this entire premise is idio
It's already a crime (Score:2)
Witness the pointlessness of politicians at work. Wildfires are declared a TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) area by the FAA. Flying in one without authorization is already a crime. Try making it stick though. Last summer during the Goodwin Fire here in Arizona, some asshat flew his Phantom around one of the fire observation towers. He was caught later and arrested but the Sheriff's Office was unable to determine for sure when he was flying because DJI has the stupid thing encrypted.
Ridiculous (Score:2, Troll)
Private drones should be able to fly unmolested, even if there is a fire, this is a newsworthy/noteworthy, and there SHOULD be an allowed way to observe this aerially without creating a hazard; someone's theoretical issues with it an obstinance against change should not result in attempts to make laws criminalizing operation of drones --- possible collision with a drone is just a theoretical threat which should not draw any reaction other than maybe requiring some pilots to change their behavior to
Drone vs. Aircraft (Score:2)
it poses a huge threat to aircraft working to suppress the fire and forces them to ground," said Tipton in a statement.
I'm sorry, I don't see this. How the hell? How the hell is a couple pounds of flying plastic going to pose a threat to an AIRCRAFT?
Maybe I'm naive or not seeing it, or whatever else, but really, how the heck is that a threat to safety? What could a drone possibly do to an aircraft in terms of damage and causing the aircraft to abort it's mission or whatever? Is there some evidence of this actually occurring?
I imagine the real story is:
Aircraft Pilot: OH FUCK there's a spec of something flying around ne
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How the hell is a couple pounds of flying plastic going to pose a threat to an AIRCRAFT?
By flying into the propeller of course.
Propellers spin at very high speeds and are quite fragile.
Re: this should be a misdemeanor (Score:2, Interesting)
Reckless endangerment of human life? Sounds execution-worthy to me.
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Re: this should be a misdemeanor (Score:2)
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What part of drone did you miss?
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What part of the rest of the summary did I not read?
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>"misdemeanour for endangering peoples lives? I think not. If anything what they are proposing sounds too light."
That is super-dramatic. Let's think about typical felonies for a moment:
Murder
Rape
Kidnapping
Robbery
Arson
Extortion
Blackmail
Manslaughter
Grand larceny
These are ACTUAL harm to people's lives.... mostly intentional violent crimes. Does flying a drone around and having it drift too close to a fire really seem to fit? By your logic- well, you are "endangering people's lives" by speeding, following
Re:this should be a misdemeanor (Score:5, Insightful)
A potential Felony is proper. I would hope they would start off with a heavy fine but repeat violations or causing one of the above results should pull the felony charge and year penalty.
Drones near fires has become a serious problem and needs to be stomped hard and fast before people do start dying.
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Has there been a single case of that occurring? Or just reports of pilots seeing drones? Drones don't typically fly high enough to interfere with aircraft, though low flying firefighting equipment is probably an exception. Damage from birds is orders of magnitude more likely than from a drone, and occurs on a regular basis...over 70,000 incidents between 2010 and 2016 according to FAA reports. Do they stop flying in the area when they see birds? No, and they shouldn't. This is a simple overreaction to
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Has there been a single case of that occurring? Or just reports of pilots seeing drones?
Yes. Many.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.... [cbslocal.com]
PS: Can't they just shoot the drone or something?
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GPP was asking has there been a case of a plane crashing because it hit a drone. You link stories of pilots scared of nothing.
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You don't wait until people start dying before you fix a problem (this is why they grounded flights in the first place), especially a problem that can be fixed with little to no side effects, like banning drones near wildfires.
Re:this should be a misdemeanor (Score:4, Informative)
The UK CAA recently did some pretty extensive testing [service.gov.uk], 1.2kg class drones were a significant hazard to helicopters and non-airline airplane windscreens and propulsion surfaces. That means almost the entire firefighting fleet in most cases as only the larger 737 class tankers would be likely to have birdstrike rated windscreens and fanblades, and those are only used on the largest of forest fires.
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Damage from birds is orders of magnitude more likely than from a drone
What is more likely, a strike or damage? A strike is more likely, but given one is soft gooey and all hard bits are hollow and brittle actual damage from a strike is orders of magnitude more likely from a drone.
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"soft gooey" has dropped quite a few planes, There's actual evidence of it. Come back when you have some for your case.
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"soft gooey" has dropped quite a few planes, There's actual evidence of it. Come back when you have some for your case.
Oh I know. Soft and gooey can actually damage planes quite well. Now imagine hitting reinforced plastic or better still iron cores from motors.
Like I said. Actual damage is more likely from a drone.
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Damage from birds is orders of magnitude more likely than from a drone, and occurs on a regular basis...
A bird getting in the way of an aircraft is considered a capital crime, and the bird is executed on the spot.
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Drones are "birds" too!
Re: this should be a misdemeanor (Score:2)
But this is a hypothetical. I'm not aware of *any* cases of this actually happening. A plane crashing into a drone for the most place is going to just break the drone. Those Cessnas are surprisingly durable little planes and people regularly survive them crashing
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Right, but how are ridiculous prison sentences and all the myriad life ruining consequences (Including potentially life in prison, 3 strikes and all that) making this equasion better? Big fines is plenty of deterent, It seems that we have this one tool, prison, and its the only one we know about even when its the wrong tool.Surely theres smarter ways than just piling more misery on the already bloated prison system
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When it causes aircraft trying to fight a fire to crash yes.
"When it causes", indeed. Contrast firing a gun into the air with firing a gun into a person.
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And when you fire that gun into the air you totally know the bullet just exits the atmosphere, travels to the sun and is disintegrated in hot plasma, right? It totally doesn't fall back down to Earth and hits something.
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And yet, they are vastly different crimes with vastly different penalties.
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Sure they're different crimes, but in many states firing into the air (at least within a city) is still considered a felony offense, precisely because it has the potential to kill people. A felony is absolutely appropriate for deliberately reckless behavior that can kill people (same thing should be, and sometimes is, true of things like swatting or shining a laser at a plane).
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A bullet fired at a ballistic trajectory can definitely kill someone when it lands.
A bullet fired straight up isn't going to do much, if any, damage.
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Uhhh... Where'd you get that idea from?
A bullet fired straight up will come back down with almost the same force minus a bit of wind resistance...
It comes down minus a lot of wind resistance, at terminal velocity, either tumbling or falling base down depending on how much excess stability it had from spin. 150 to 300 feet per second is typical so 1/10th the velocity and 1/100th of the kinetic energy.
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I would hope they would start off with a heavy fine but repeat violations or causing one of the above results should pull the felony charge and year penalty.
Pfft. Heavy fines are for vehicular manslaughterers, CEOs and bankers. This is a dumb person with a toy. Expect them to go after maximum sentence every single time. Hell if the guy ends up flying his drone with with hacked software he pirated online, we could probably lock the guy up for life.
Re:this should be a misdemeanor (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes it puts people and property in danger (Score:5, Insightful)
These are ACTUAL harm to people's lives.... mostly intentional violent crimes. Does flying a drone around and having it drift too close to a fire really seem to fit?
Yes it does. They have caused aircraft fighting the fire to crash or to divert from their missions (putting out fires) which can cost lives of firefighters and civilians as well as property. This isn't hypothetical [firerescue1.com]. It's literally no different than forcing a fire engine in your town to divert therefore slowing response times. People die when that happens. If you have a legitimate need to fly a drone over a fire then coordinate that activity with the people fighting the fire and there is no problem. Otherwise you're just some jackass trying to amuse yourself and causing problems for others. Furthermore I don't think you appreciate how fast these fires can move. If you are close enough to fly most drones over the fire then you are in legitimate physical danger and might endanger others who have to rescue you from your stupidity.
By your logic- well, you are "endangering people's lives" by speeding, following too closely, jaywalking, drinking alcohol in public, running at a pool, or playing hockey, so those should be felonies?
In some cases those things are actually felonies. Don't believe me? Go ahead and drive a car through a school zone at 100 miles per hour while drinking in public and see if that doesn't land you some time behind bars.
Now, if you flew a drone in a way that ACTUALLY caused harm to someone, perhaps THAT would justify a felony.
By your logic attempted murder isn't a crime because no one was actually harmed.
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They have caused aircraft fighting the fire to crash or to divert from their missions
Crash? No. Panic needlessly? Often.
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I suggest you go to the local batting cage, put on a helmet, and take a baseball to the head. Then, tell me that getting hit in the face by a battery at 130 knots is "needlessly panic".
I will happily go to someplace within 30 miles of the local batting cage, no helmet required.
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Cite me one instance where a drone has caused a Fire Fighting plane to crash.
It has never happened.
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Intent is not required for all felonies (Score:2)
First, I never said it wouldn't be a crime. Most importantly, you are forgetting an extremely important legal concept- intent. In those cases, the perp INTENDED to do harm.
Involuntary Manslaughter is a felony where there was no intent to do harm. Intent is not always a consideration when there is a sufficient amount of negligence. If you drive drunk and kill or injure someone I'm sure you probably didn't mean to harm them but it's a felony all the same and rightly so. Intent does not always matter. Similarly I'm sure the drone pilots probably don't intend to do harm but when someone dies or someone's house burns down because their actions caused aircraft to be grounded fo
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Wow. You're jumping from crime to crime, cherry-picking from the criminal code out of context in an attempt to make a case for making involuntary impedement of an emergency vehicle a crime. Firetrucks, and now murder. Wow. You're really reaching.
Currently, impeding an emergency vehicle is a traffic infraction. Impeding an emergency vehicle *with intent* IS a crime.
So unless you intend on making *unintentional* impediment of an emergency vehicle (flying firetruck) a crime, be prepared to argue for making *e
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>"Involuntary Manslaughter is a felony where there was no intent to do harm."
Correct. Felonies are normally severe crimes that actually caused harm *or* they intended to do harm.
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By your logic- well, you are "endangering people's lives" by speeding, following too closely, jaywalking, drinking alcohol in public, running at a pool, or playing hockey, so those should be felonies?
Err there are people who get locked up for such things. So yes his logic holds. Well the first couple anyway. You're bordering on stupidity for the last few: e.g. the act of drinking in public doesn't make you a danger to anyone, running at a pool, .... like what the fuck, and playing hockey you're not a danger to anyone who hasn't specifically accepted the risks involved by joining the exercise.
We probably already have too many things mis-categorized as felonies (like simple copyright infringement, some drug possession).
Those two I agree with. The former shouldn't be any criminal matter in the slightest, and the latter shouldn't ev
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That is super-dramatic. Let's think about typical felonies for a moment:
Your list is a lot more dramatic that the OP's post, consisting almost entirely of violent felonies. Many non-violent crimes are felonies, including forgery and vandalism.
Re: this should be a misdemeanor (Score:1)
And this happened in reality and not just in your head?
Re: this should be a misdemeanor (Score:3, Insightful)
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Fair enough. How about reckless endangerment, forgery, and vandalism, which are all felonies in California.
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misdemeanour for endangering peoples lives?
The problem with so many laws, regulations, etc is one of unintended consequences.
With such a law in place, if somebody out piloting a drone spots a wildfire starting, they may decide not to report the fire for fear of prosecution. So then any potential benefit from drone-related crowd-sourced wildfire data reporting is seriously impacted if not practically eliminated.
As more and more people fly drones, crowd-sourced early wildfire detection from drone pilot reports will become ever more useful. I'd think
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Sightseeing drones are a big problem in fire country, since a lot of wildfire fighting takes place in the air, with aircraft loaded at gross and in turbulence. And coming soon, drones will be involved on the side of firefighters.
Re: this should be a misdemeanor (Score:3)
Re: this should be a misdemeanor (Score:2)
Yeah. I get the need to crack down, but with the absurdly high imprisonment rate in the US and the extremely serious implications of having a felony on the rap sheet this is surely overkill. Big huge fine, sure, as long as the judge has the discretion to differentiate between ignorance and malice. But prison and a felony rap? Too much. And keep in mind , Colorado is a three strikes state , so we have to consider the possibility of someone doing a mandatory extreme length prison sentense for flying a drone,
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Like being gay or being a witch? Hm, I think I hate your standard...
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Re:Give me a break; misdemeanor is already excessi (Score:5, Insightful)
Note also that the wording is up to a year. That gives them the option of going first with a misdemeanor and fine for most cases, but should a drone cause the crash of a firefighting aircraft or loss of life due to aircraft not being able to drop retardant at a critical point then they have the option of going for the felony charge. They can also go that way for repeat offenses.
Drones flying near fires is a serious problem and it needs to be stomped hard to get people to wake up and not interfere just to get some cool video for Facebook.
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Why not just shoot down the drones though? It seems like losing a $300 drone should be punishment enough. It's essentially the same thing as flying a kite, so maybe felony prosecution is a bit heavy-handed.
So you're saying the Forest Service should equip its planes and helicopters with drone-killer air-to-air missiles. Cool! Or maybe directed EMP weapons?
Or, instead of militarizing the USFS, we could just attach a heavy enough penalty to being caught flying a drone over a forest fire to ensure that the word quickly spreads through the drone hobbyist community that breaking the law and endangering USFS personnel who are already doing a hard and dangerous job will have a very bad outcome. Its much less sexy,
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Go watch some dashcams on youtube for awhile. Shouldn't take long to find someone that makes a (legal) lane change, followed by someone severely over-reacting by violent
STUPIDITY (Score:2)
"Small threat? When a drone is seen near an active fire, all aircraft are grounded until it is removed from the scene."
Blaming a blatant over-reaction as justification of threat determination is just stupid. And if they see a large bird over the forest - do they ground all the planes?
I am sure many large birds enter the air while fleeing a fire, and pose a similar equivalent risk to aircraft. So we should ground all fire fighting aircraft if anyone sees a large big in the air.
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Small threat? When a drone is seen near an active fire, all aircraft are grounded until it is removed from the scene.
The choice to ground the aircraft due to an imaginary thrat is what caused the harm.
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"small birds" have caused over 70,000 bird strikes to be noticed by the FAA between 2010-2016. How many drone strikes have there been?
Re: Give me a break; misdemeanor is already excess (Score:4, Informative)
Drones and Helicopters (Score:2)
...but firefighting aircraft tend to be slower moving over the operational zone than in normal flight..
Unless of course, the drone hits a helicopter's blades which are moving quite fast in all circumstances: https://fstoppers.com/drone/nt... [fstoppers.com]
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Are you dumb enough to think small birds hang out near wildfires?
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They aren't worried about the $50 lightweight drones you can buy from the toy store. Those really don't pose a serious threat to aircraft because they weigh almost nothing and are flimsy plastic things. Besides, given that range on those is a few hundred feet, whoever is operating it would be close by (which means being close enough to fly one over a raging wildfire is suicidal). It's the drones that cost thousands of dollars and can weigh several pounds or more, and can be operated remotely by someone m
More to come (Score:2)
If the issue is bringing down a plane/helicopter at a fire scene, why stop at large fires? What about -- house fires, hostage situations, ... ? That is, anywhere where news choppers (presumably approved) have to fly low over a scene.
You'll probably see that too in the future. There's going to be a lot of new laws written to deal with the problems caused by drones. I think this is just the tip of the spear on those.
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That is, anywhere where news choppers (presumably approved) have to fly low over a scene.
They aren't. News helicopters are actually flying pretty high, using a strong zoom lens to give you that footage.
The news helicopters keep the low-altitude area free precisely because they would be a danger.
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"Hey, we couldn't drop retardant on that growing wildfire because your drone was in the way, so twenty houses and three people we could have saved got incinerated. Don't do it again you naughty boy."
Yeah, that'll do it.
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Except the drone was not in the way. It was 20 miles over there. But they chose not to fly.
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make the punishment so outlandishly large only an extremely small set of stupid people would think to do it.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
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That's 240 pounds of water; which is orders of magnitude higher than the weight capacity of consumer drones, AND that's still an insignificant amount of water for firefighting --- come back when you can carry 20,000 gallons of water or 15000 gallons of fire ratardants.