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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Probably many people are just ignorant, not deliberately mischievous.

The drone problem has being disclosed since years. People flying drones are technologically competent. "If you fly we cant" campaign was launched on several media.

Argumenting ignorance as excuse is strange after all those years.

I have never seen this campaign, though I would have some reservations about flying a drone around a fire my curiosity may get the better of me. Just anecdotal evidence, buy it's entirely possible to be technologically competent and ignorant.

Additionally, my father isn't overly technologically competent but does own a drone, they've been fairly standard gifts for family members who buy everything for a while now. I can easily imagine him and his golfing buddies talking about getting footage of a fire on their drones.

It never would have occurred to me that aircraft tough enough for the heat and turbulence and debris over a forest fire could be affected by drones. I can find a few "if you fly, we can't" search results but I hadn't seen that message before today. Maybe they're just very precisely targeted? (Drones are tempting but I don't own one.)

I'm pretty sure that people who design, build, operate, maintain, pilot or regulate aircraft know more about that topic than anyone else does. Without strong evidence to the contrary, I'm going to believe them when they say it's dangerous to have drones in the air they're trying to use.

"It never would have occurred to me" doesn't meet the standard for strong evidence to the contrary.

I'm not saying the problem doesn't exist, just that it's counter-intuitive and not widely publicized.

I don't think the parent is arguing that it isn't true, just that ignorance is more likely than suggested.

> It never would have occurred to me that aircraft tough enough for the heat and turbulence and debris over a forest fire could be affected by drones

If ignorance is an excuse, then drone operators should be tested on such knowledge and licensed. Someone who doesn't realize their drone can impact another aircraft shouldn't be operating drones in the first place.

A drone hitting the tail rotor of a helicopter will drop it right out of the sky. A drone crashing into the leading edge of a jet's wing will hole it mightily (there's a video online if you google it.) Birds can do serious damage too but birds usually try to avoid low, slow aircraft. Drones don't.

It's been well publicized especially in areas that have many forest fires, but some people still don't get the message. I still meet people who have never heard that pointing lasers at airplanes can result in serious jail time, and when I tell them they think I'm kidding.

It's 100% ignorance. And there's no requirement to be technically competent thanks to ez-mode consumer drones.

The problem is there's no certification or training requirement, there's no barrier to entry. Any cretin can go and buy something like a DJI Inspire, not read any of the rules/regulations, not understand how dangerous it is, and fly it straight into their neighbour's garage door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TQQcBWV6Vs

There's a small handful of people who know the rules and choose to break them, but they're also the people who will immediately land and bail if they hear air traffic because they understand that the consequences of any fuckups will be life-ruining. The guys holding back firefighting operations are just clueless idiots.

That’s pretty much the reason Europeans don’t allow people to own guns.

This is not correct. The details of gun ownership rights depends on the individual European state, but it's absolutely possible for a civilian to own guns. In fact, some do. It's just not engrained in the general culture or connected to the protection of rights, and subject to stricter regulation.

Look, I didn’t say “all Europeans”.

And “stricter regulation” is literally “you need to prove you need a gun and that you are sane” in most of the cases.

"Prove you need it" isn't really an accurate summation of European gun laws, since as far as I'm aware they all allow ownership of firearms in cases where somebody wants a gun, rather than needs it. Who in Europe needs to hunt for substance, or needs to participate in marksmanship sports? These are recreational hobbies that the gun laws of all European nations I'm aware of accommodate.

I know many European gun laws are what would be described in the US as 'shall-issue', so it's not 'prove you need it' in all cases.

In the UK, which has some of the strictest laws, it's more like show you have a legitimate reason. Hunting is a common one, but self defense is not a legitimate reason. Apparently, working in maritime security in a piracy area lets you buy almost anything, even handguns and automatic weapons that are otherwise banned.

> In the UK, which has some of the strictest laws, it's more like show you have a legitimate reason.

This is not true for guns. The UK police are required, by law, to issue a gun certificate unless they have a specific reason not to. Rifles are different.

I really don't want to wade into this debate, but I'm really confused by how you are using "gun" and "rifle" here. "Rifle" us a strict subset of "gun" in my vocabulary.

A gun is a shotgun, a canon, something that fires shot or a shell, that kind of thing. A rifle has rifling and fires a bullet. It's technical, but we're talking about laws so the technicalities matter. In the UK a licence for a gun, such as a shotgun, is 'shall-issue' to use terminology the US is familiar with. They need a reason to deny - you don't need a reason to be approved.

For future reference, in the U.S. and Canada (and possibly elsewhere), gun also refers to rifles and handguns, not just smoothbore guns.

I find it incredibly amusing how everyone in this thread clearly had forgotten in the context of what I had made that comment in the first place.

Now - if you use a gun outside the hunting area or marksmanship competition, what do you think would happen to you?

I have started this thread because that's exactly what drone owners are currently doing. Trying to defend them because they "didn't know about non-static no-fly zones" is a good reason to take away their license to use the drones as opposed to saying that "people make mistakes".

In a lot of European countries self defence is enough of a reason to be granted a weapon license. The regulation is mostly about sanity, central databases and background and regular storage checks.

Is allowed but regulated. There are duck hunters in Europe also.

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