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Drone saves a life

Regular readers will recall that many months ago, I started an initiative to create an "Amateur Drone Register".

This was to be a register of people who had multi-rotor or fixed-wing FPV craft and who would be prepared to offer these craft and their own services to various authorities in time of need such as civil emergencies, search and rescue, etc.

You'd think it would be an idea that would have been very popular - but it wasn't, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Civil Defense wasn't interested because they had concerns over such issues as legality and liability.

Secondly, amateur "drone" owners were hesitant for exactly the same reasons.

Isn't this tragic?

How sad it is when people are unwilling to offer or accept the benefits of new technology because organisations such as CAA are out there sabre-rattling.

But really, just how practical would it be for a drone to perform search and rescue?

Aren't we simply talking "pie in the sky" stuff?

Well no, we're not.

According to this report, a "drone" successfully located an injured man and helped facilitate his rescue in Canada.

Okay, this wasn't your $100 Chinese-cheapy multirotor and it did have an infrared camera onboard, but in other cases such factors may not be an issue.

It is very clear that these small unmanned craft have a potentially huge role to play in such operations - if we let them. Unfortunately, in the eyes of CAA they are considered "unmanned aerial systems" and as such, are subject to very stringent policies that forbid their use without a raft of paperwork and compliance requirements.

Now to be fair, much of the time, such restrictions are warranted and a good idea. We don't want a raft of amateur drone fliers trying to negotiate the streets of urban Auckland -- placing the lives of people and the safety of property in jeopardy.

However, it strikes me that there ought to be special exemption given for times of civil emergency or some other situation where the use of a drone may well save a life. Until this happens, we'll have the "drone" owners being very careful about how they advertise the fact that they have one of these devices and the very services who might need them will be unwilling to call for the help that could save someone's life.

It seems that when it comes to these craft, NZ's regulators are presently sitting on a knife-edge, unsure which way to fall.

They could opt for the system that the Australians have implemented, where craft under a certain mass are effectively exempt from control and, as the mass increases, a progressively more stringent set of regulations and compliance requirements apply.

Or, as is presently the case, they could simply continue to consider *every* "drone", regardless of its mass, size or speed, to be illegal -- without the right permissions, paperwork and compliance. Yes, even this microdrone is, in the eyes of the CAA, illegal to fly in my own garden.

I wonder if/when an NZer's life will be lost through the over-regulation of these things?

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