Yes, I’m sure the comparative social status and presentability of the parties involved had no influence on their decision.
The old drunk was not the main issue in this video; the owner’s use of the public street to “calibrate” a UAV is a bigger issue. The drone was less than 2 meters away from others’ parked cars. This is not smart, even if legal. In itself, it should not automatically be seen as an entitled jerk stunt, but taken together with threatening to sue an obviously indigent loser… it looks less sympathetic.
I haven’t had the opportunity to use drones at work yet, but it’s very likely I will at some point. I don’t share your affection for them, but I also have no "fear " of them per se. They are a useful tool for surveying large areas cheaply and quickly. However, they are already subject to FAA regulation and they likely will become subject to municipal regulation as they become common. Because thoughtless recreational users are nuisances. Moreso than smelly old drunks sometimes – particularly when their sense of entitlement is this well developed.
UAVs have been in use at Burning Man for >4 years now, and their sensible protocols of use involve keeping them well out of the way of people and their vehicles. The guidelines they’ve published probably should be adopted in urban areas more generally.
If only to keep the young, well-heeled and self-important from being offended by the odd fits and starts of street people.
And the next time I see some pretentious spoiled hipster wannabe poser brat class warfare villain texting on an iphone when I’m at a bar, I’m gonna drop him with a bar stool and smash it to pieces with a fruit muddler! After all, if anyone dares use some new technology I feel vaguely and weirdly threatened by, I can just break it, call them pretentious and it’s all good, apparently.
I guess it’s nice to see that you can always find some issue that will turn just about anyone into a self righteous, conservative warmonger demanding that everyone has to live like them. I don’t mind if people own drones, it’s when they use the drone agenda to try and shove it down our throats that I get drunk and smash all their stuff!
I have no affection for drones. I’m not an owner or user nor do I suspect I will be anytime in the near future. What I also am not is someone over eager to jump on what is clearly a hate fad bandwagon in order to demonize something. This whole “omg it was near some cars!” thing is exactly the sort of aggressive overreaction nobody needs. We do things in public places. Kids skateboard in the street, people cycle. You could crash a bicycle into a parked car and scratch it up, people do! Pretending that drone usage is special from these activities requires special evidence and arguments, something no one is providing.
To put this more precisely, you used the word nuisance. Others are using words like problem, dangerous, etc. Can you cite precedent? Personal accounts are alright but could we perhaps get the many police reports and news articles of people suffering injury at the hands of irresponsible drone use? Property damage reports? I mean other than to drones? That sort of thing. Because so far I haven’t found drones to be a nuisance at all.
And we do “things” in public spaces within some pretty common, clear-cut commonsense boundaries. UAVs aren’t that great a departure from remote-controlled toys, which have been flying around peoples’ backyards since the 1960s. However, they are a step more intrusive, and can cause more damage. A +$1000 UAV is heavier than a plastic copter from Toys-R-Us, has the capability of surveilling the interiors of those vehicles, and will cause hundreds to thousands of dollars worth of damage if it crashes into them due to a “calibration” error.
Expecting users to act with at least the level of courtesy and good sense expected of remote-control toy aficionados is not an hysterical stance.
BTW, do you have a rational argument against the BurningMan usage guidelines I linked to?
Prior to his “attack”, the possibly inebriated gentleman voiced his concern of the drone’s potential invasion of his property. This was a preemptive strike in the name of privacy.
This spells out the point precisely. Yours is an argument over interpretations of etiquette. They’re not acting in a manner you think is polite (despite the fact that they were apparently breaking no law and had done none of the damage you appeal to hypothetically.) That’s a “too bad” issue. You can expect people to adhere to your unspoken etiquette standards all you want, but you shouldn’t be surprised when they (quite regularly) fail to nor does that in any possible way justify assault, vandalism, destruction of property, etc. Your personal opinions on what constitutes polite or decent behavior are not the objective final word.
This goes well beyond the realm of exaggeration. In what Michael Bay summer blockbuster do you envision the drone in that video smashing through dozens of vehicles before erupting into a block leveling explosion? If you’re not even going to take your own arguments seriously then no idea why the hell I should.
Why would I need one? I’m not trying to argue that Burning Man can’t make its own suggestions for etiquette and behavior for its own, isolated event nor would such an argument, either way, be relevant to this drone hatred frenzy or applause of actual destructive criminal acts, not the far fetched fantasies concocted in peoples imaginations.
Yup, irrational drunken paranoia, rather like shooting a stranger for walking too close to your land. Exactly why applauding him is a terrible response to his actions.
I didn’t realize you were unfamiliar with basic car repair costs. A modest fail on the part of the UAV would easily result in hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of body damage – to the one vehicle it would likely glance off of as it crashed. If it’s loaded with explosives and flown through a row of cars a la a Bruce Willis movie… then we’d be talking tens to hundreds of thousands.
Keeping the things out of, or well above the public streets, is not some bizarre, onerous requirement. If it were, then similar requirements wouldn’t be normal protocol at an event like Burning Man.
A minor scratch of the paint is a much more likely outcome of a car-drone encounter. Unless we consider the low-probability events like a high altitude freefall or a full-speed side crash, both of which are rather unlikely during a supervised calibration sequence.
I’m unclear as to how a small buzzing drone in the middle of a thoroughfare is “in the face” of someone who had to run across the street to get to it. The drunk brought himself to the drone. He was irritated by someone’s buzzy toy and smashed it. He’s a destructive, rude clod.
“I don’t like something” isn’t legal or social justification for destroying people’s property.
Whoops, sorry, misread that the first time! I thought it read “hundreds OF thousands of dollars.”
If you want to use Burning Man as the foundation for law and etiquette worldwide, you can make a go of it. I personally have no use for that standard and I strongly suspect you’ll get a lot of push back. What I prefer is to use real situations to determine how to respond to actual precedent, not worst case hypothetical scenarios. Further, again, you need to demonstrate how the hypothetical is so distinct from others. Car owners are not safe from all possible error or accident. Again, people can aand do crash bikes into parked cars regularly. Are you suggesting that all bikes need to be removed from the street? If not then on what basis are you demanding drones be? Unless you can demonstrate, conclusively, that drones are a significantly higher level of threat then I don’t feel you have a rational argument, only an emotional one based on a fear that has no anchor in reality. I simply don’t see that these guys were posing any elevated public threat or nuisance above your average cyclist.
Most importantly, however, is how this is being used to justify the drunk man’s response. This is quite literally, 'that black guy made me nervous so I shot him," level argument. “That drone made me nervous because I was paranoid about it scratching my car or peeping in my windows, so I smashed someone else’s property.” Beyond your argument of etiquette, this is entirely inexcusable. Your argument alone, in my mind, needs considerably more evidence and considerably less supposition, this guys actions require exponentially more. Something the police have, apparently, agreed with.
