Drone accidents — hardware, not operators, to blame

A study looking into the cause of 150 civil drone accidents has found that faulty equipment, rather than operator error, is generally to blame, according to a recent ABC News article.

The study, from RMIT University’s School of Engineering, found that technical problems accounted for 64% of incidents between 2006 and 2016, prompting researchers to call for a review of current air safety regulations.

RMIT’s Dr Graham Wild said if a pilot lost radio connection with a drone and did not manage to recover the link quickly, it was likely to crash.

“The Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] requirements I think are 100 miles per hour [160 kilometres per hour] and 25 kilos — that is an awful lot of kinetic energy and if that was to hit you it would cause some serious damage.

“There is the potential for a [drone travelling at] 160 kilometres an hour, weighing 24 kilos, to be able to kill someone,” he said.

Wild said stricter safety regulations would be needed as Australian skies became busy with drones being used for commercial purposes.

“Once we understand why the majority of our issues and incidents are happening … then we can start making important [and] informed decisions,” he said.

“But at this point in time, if it becomes clear that all we’re doing is putting all of the responsibility on the ability of the person to fly, we are clearly missing the largest pot of accidents and incidents which are occurring just because the equipment is not as good as it should be.

“If Australia Post, Amazon, Domino’s get a waiver for the exclusion where you’re not actually allowed to fly over people and they have their systems [found to be] safe enough, we will in fact see drones flying overhead,” he said.

Despite the Civil Aviation Safety Authority ruling small recreational drones cannot fly within 10 metres of a person, or more than 120 metres in controlled airspaces, there have been a number of accidents in Australia.

In January, a drone came within 50 metres of a rescue helicopter on the Gold Coast; in 2013 a recreational drone crashed into the Sydney Harbour Bridge; and the following year, a triathlete in Western Australia was hit by a malfunctioning drone.

The research did not look at incidents involving drones operated by the military.