If you’re going to visit a national park, you better leave your drone at home. If you don’t, you might be tased and arrested.
That’s exactly what happened to Travis Sanders when he was caught flying his 3-inch quadcopter to videotape a lava lake at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park late last week.
According to Hawaii News Now, via Motherboard, Sanders was flying his drone near the lava lake when a park ranger approached him and demanded he bring the drone down.
Flying a drone in any of the country’s national parks is currently illegal, something Sanders said he didn’t know.
In an interview with Hawaii News Now, Sanders said he didn’t realize the person telling him to land the drone was a ranger, so he simply said he didn’t have any ID and that he was leaving.
The ranger, though, said that Sanders started to run away, at which point he pulled his Taser and fired it at Sanders who hit the ground with a thud.
A spokesperson for the national park told Hawaii News Now that Sanders refused to give his name and fled the scene. The spokesperson added that Sanders was only shot by the stun gun because he was acting unpredictably.
Sanders now has the distinction of being the first person in the U.S. to be arrested for flying a drone in a national park.
This is far from the first time a drone operator has run afoul of the law because of their hobby.
Last year a student at the University of Texas was arrested for flying a drone over the school’s football stadium. Similarly, a man who flew and crashed a drone in New York City last year was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment when the drone nearly hit a pedestrian.
Also in New York last year, two men were arrested for flying their drones near a New York City Police helicopter. In Paris, France, meanwhile, three journalists were arrested for flying a drone in the city limits.
According to Popular Science, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a series of guidelines for flying drones in February, which includes limiting their altitude to less than 500 feet and their speed to less than 100 miles per hour. Several drone manufacturers now also include software that doesn’t let the drone fly in certain locations –– near the White House, for example. Or in public parks.
No comments:
Post a Comment