Saturday, November 29, 2014

Don't Do Drones, Kids

                Drones have been an up and coming technology for some time now. With the increase of drones in people’s homes, however, it has been raising some concerns. There are many different types of people who use drones. There are the people who fly them for fun, pranksters, and all sorts of people. The rising popularity of drones may start to cause issues. There have been many cases of drones flying too close to sports stadiums. Due to the nature of such a thing, it raises concerns about security. “With security concerns mounting among stadium operators, the F.A.A. recently updated a policy originally created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The policy now explicitly prohibits drones from flying near major sporting events.” Now the interesting thing is that, the pilot of the drone does not have to be doing anything wrong. Just the act of flying a drone too close to one of these locations will be considered a crime.
                Amazon was looking into ways to get drones to deliver their packages for same-day delivery, but it looks like it will be a while before that happens. Not only is the government limiting private use of drones, but also commercial use of them. “Commercial use of drones is also largely prohibited in the United States, largely because of the perceived risks of unleashing swarms of them into the skies. “ Now the F.A.A. is looking into ways to change this, but it is still strange that the American government has this fear of drones, when they constantly are in use overseas. If there’s any organization who knows a lot about drones, it is the U.S. government, and they are clearly pretty scared.  
                It’s interesting to note the extreme hesitation about private and commercial use of drones. I think that there is a lot of good to be done with drones, far more good than bad. Thing is that we have not even seen a lot of things accomplished with drones, outside of bombing (which is a bad thing). If Amazon is allowed to get their delivery program off the ground, it would be a huge improvement in their infrastructure. Same-day delivery could finally be achieved consistently with this technology. There are countless alternatives that one could do with drones. What if there was a hospital in desperate need of a replacement heart? Send it over on a drone. The government needs to start overlooking their own actions and start allowing this good to come to fruition. I do not have a problem with certain restrictions, as I think they are definitely needed. In the article they also note the problem drones could pose with other manned aircraft, and I think that it is a valid concern. But there are many ways to solve these problems. All we can do is wait for the F.A.A. to finally get their regulations in place. I think that drones have nowhere to go but up, and that private use of drones will be going up as well. 

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