Drones: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

The ‘principal of innocence’, which means that one is considered innocent until proven guilty, is quite common in many parts of the world.  However, when it comes to drone incidents and close encounters, the media seem much more interested in attention grabbing headlines than establishing the facts.  Take for example an event that occurred in the first week of January where a plane coming in to land at an airport in Mozambique was damaged after hitting an unknown object.  Despite the fact that the object was initially reported by the local aviation authority as an ‘external body’, one of the UK’s biggest national newspapers, the Daily Mail, ran with the headline, ‘Drone crashes into a packed Boeing 737 passenger jet tearing holes in the plane’s nose as it comes into land at an airport in Mozambique’.  Sadly the Daily Mail wasn’t the only publication misrepresent the incident with the Mirror and USA Today, amongst others, also citing that a drone was the cause of the damage. When it comes to drones, due diligence in fact checking and investigative journalism is not well practiced.

This is not the first time that the media have speculated about a ‘drone’ hitting a plane.  Back in April 2016 The Telegraph ran the story ‘Drone hits British Airways plane as it prepares to land at Heathrow’, however less than a week later the UK’s Transport Minister Robert Goodwill, ‘…admitted authorities had not yet confirmed whether what struck the Airbus A320 was a remote-controlled device.’  He also went on to say that “the reported drone strike on Sunday has not been confirmed it was actually a drone. It was the local police force that tweeted that they had a report of a drone striking an aircraft. And indeed the early reports of a dent in the front of the plane were not confirmed – there was no actual damage to the plane and there’s indeed some speculation that it may have even been a plastic bag or something.”

You may be asking yourself but why does this matter? And the simple answer is regulation.Yes, the drone industry needs regulation and manufacturers should work closely with aviation authorities and governments to make sure that the skies are kept safe for all but these false reports could be quite damaging to such a young, innovative industry.  An industry trying to redefine the ways in which professionals in filmmaking, agriculture, search and rescue, conservation and energy infrastructure, are all embracing drone technology to accomplish feats safer, faster and with greater efficiency than ever before.

We need to differentiate fear from facts. And like any new technology out there, regulations need to keep up with the development in order for us to embrace it and use them in safe and responsible ways.

 

 

The post Drones: Guilty Until Proven Innocent appeared first on Drone Inner.