Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shot down any hope of drones being used for commercial purposes in the forseeable future, in a move that threatens to stifle drone innovation and could even have potentially fatal consequences.

Under its proposed ‘guidelines’ for commercial drone use, the FAA has excluded the vast majority of the US population from ever being able to fly one with its requirement that all drone operators must possess a pilot’s license. Its other guidelines are equally strict too – they include no night time flying, no flying above 400 feet, no flying within three miles of stadiums and an insistence that drones must remain in sight of the person operating it at all time.

As Mike Elgan notes in an opinion piece at Computerworld.com, these rules are a wild overreach that will severely damage US competitiveness in the drone industry. Flying a drone is totally different from piloting an aircraft and so the pilot’s licence requirement is simply nonsensical, as are most of the other proposed rules – why on earth must the drone remain within the operator’s eyeshot when it can be equipped with third-person viewing technology?

The FAA’s overly cautious approach to drones has been designed to ensure air safety, but rather than save lives its short-sightedness could actually be fatal. Take the Ambulance Drone concept for example. Developed by Technical University of Delft engineer Alex Momont in the Netherlands, the Ambulance Drone does exactly as the name suggests – rushing to deliver potentially life-saving medical equipment in the event of an emergency.

Momont says his drone can be used to deliver equipment like defibrillators to ressuscitate heart attack or drowning victims. Alternatively it could be used to deliver emergency medication to remote areas faster than traditional ambulances can get there. The rapid deployment – it can deliver a defibrillator to any patient in about a 7.5-mile radius within one minute – would help to fill the time gap between an emergency event taking place and help arriving at the scene, and could potentially save hundreds of lives.

“At over 100 kilometers per hour (62 mph), these drones create an ultra-fast response system capable of increasing survival chance from 8 percent to 80 percent,” says Momont.

The only problem is that Momont’s drone will never get off the ground in the US if the FAA gets its way. Not many hospitals will have qualified pilots on hand, and very few accidents ever happen within eyeshot of the emergency responders, making Ambulance Drones next to useless under the FAA’s proposed guidelines.

The FAA has gotten it totally wrong. As Elgan notes, rules are supposed to be “enabling and as few as possible”. In that case, what the FAA is proposing isn’t ‘rules’ at all. It’s actually proposing the prohibition of drones, ostensibly for safety reasons, even though it could actually end up costing more lives than it saves.

photo credit: Swamibu via photopin cc