Common sense is often the first casualty of modern society’s love affair with technological innovation. Courtesy is often the second, while, unfortunately, public safety and lives are increasingly the third.
In a little more than three decades, we have seen this cycle repeated, with little variation, again and again — with governments struggling to keep abreast of the curve with safety standards and regulations.
As car phones became more affordable in the 1980s, the problem of people thinking they could drive while holding the handset in one hand became a concern — and the cause of accidents. The advent of cellphones and hands-free systems made it possible for drivers to keep both hands on the wheel while driving, but did little to eliminate the distraction factor, or halt the ever-increasing number of road fatalities.
As the 20th century became the 21st, text messaging became widespread and texting pedestrians, oblivious to the movement of people or vehicles around them, joined the ranks of stupid drivers who thought they could text and control a vehicle at the same time — be it a car, truck or bus. The ranks of the injured or dead grew correspondingly, regardless of the public safety campaigns or police crackdowns.
The downsizing of computer operating systems that took consumers from desktop PCs to laptops to personal digital assistants, notebooks, smartphones and tablets, just meant that there were more options to distract them, making rudeness and narcissism not only commonplace, but acceptable.
Now that drones have downsized in scale and price, they have turned into a public safety issue and regulatory headache because of the same lack of common sense on the part of operators and the lack of foresight by government regulators and lawmakers.
The Civil Aviation Act (民用航空法) bars flying objects, including drones, kites, sky lanterns and hot air balloons, from flying above 60m from the elevation of an airport in the area within 6km of the central line of the runway.
Nevertheless, the Taipei Financial Center Corp on Tuesday said its personnel had found three drones near the base of Taipei 101 since last month, including one that day, while on Wednesday, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) fined a person whose drone was found last month at the end of the Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) runway.
Although the act stipulates that the owner of a drone may be fined between NT$300,000 and NT$1.5 million (US$9,515 and US$47,574) for breaking the law, both the owner of the drone that ended up on Songshan’s runway and the Chinese tourist whose drone hit Taipei 101 on Tuesday are likely to face the minimum fine as first-time offenders.
That is almost rewarding stupidity.
Drones pose a direct danger to airplanes and helicopters, and perhaps a more indirect danger to bystanders if they crash into a building or the ground. The recent years of experience of cellphone/smartphone use show that it is useless to rely on common sense or goodwill; a large number of people think that rules apply to everyone but themselves.
The CAA said that the government is considering tightening the regulations on the use of drones and a draft of the new rules could be ready by the middle of September. With the number of drones expected to grow exponentially in the coming years among hobbyists and corporate users, the government needs not only to act quickly, but to take a very tough line.
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