Welcome, Commercial Drone Pilots!
Join our growing community today!
Sign up

You all need to listen to this.

Teelions

Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2018
Messages
11
Reaction score
5
Age
72
Creepy or Innovative? Privacy or Convenience? It's Time to Talk About Civilian Drones | The Takeaway | WNYC Studios

This show was on NPR's The Takeaway today.
Summary: "There are no drone laws or regulations. Everyone can do whatever they want. The FAA has not created any regulation. Drones are bad. Drones can legally fly into your house and take pictures."

Their "expert" commentator was a person who is promoting his book on Driverless Cars! What??

Please go to their 'The Takeaway' Facebook page and make a positive comment on our collective behalf? Please do not insult or berate however. We need to educate this radio host and station to the truth of what we do and how our industry serves the greater good. https://www.facebook.com/thetakeaway

Also:
Show host's twitter: @tanzinavega
Show's twitter: @TheTakeaway
The Take-Away's producer, Jose Olivares: @jlosc9
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Wilson Lake Drone
It's just more media sensationalism crap to raise their ratings.
 
More people speaking about things they know nothing about. Sadly a lot of it comes from the individuals buying phantoms and others, that fly them unsafely and without training.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Grumpy
It's just more media sensationalism crap to raise their ratings.
Frankly, I'm disappointed that NPR chose to add to the fear-mongering about drones. They usually do their research to get their facts straight and avoid the sensationalism.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Grumpy
They did a follow up piece in response to the criticism and they had a drone law guy talking about how there actually were a bunch of laws. It wasn't that great of a piece but it did correct the original piece. That aired on Thursday, Dec. 6th and the "The Takeaway" podcast is available for free to listen to if you want to hear it for yourself.

From what I gathered from listening to the piece, the host of the Takeaway, Tanzina, had a drone crash on her fire escape outdoors and she was very alarmed and called the police then talked about her harrowing drone experience on her talk show.
 
They did a follow up piece in response to the criticism and they had a drone law guy talking about how there actually were a bunch of laws. It wasn't that great of a piece but it did correct the original piece. That aired on Thursday, Dec. 6th and the "The Takeaway" podcast is available for free to listen to if you want to hear it for yourself.

From what I gathered from listening to the piece, the host of the Takeaway, Tanzina, had a drone crash on her fire escape outdoors and she was very alarmed and called the police then talked about her harrowing drone experience on her talk show.
I surprised she hasn't gone into therapy because of her "harrowing" experience.
 
It might be a topic of therapy. We don't know. She was really upset about the drone stuck in her fire escape that apparently went unclaimed. She was saying the police were also dumbstruck about what to do with it. Her experience with local law enforcement sounds very credible though.

I would have been psyched about finding a drone and would like to believe that I'm so benevolent that I'd access the drone's data for the owner to claim it. Assuming of course that no laws had been broken in the incident and that the proper FAA and NTSB reports had been filed, if necessary. After making the initial determination about whether the intended flight was 107 or recreational, as defined by the FAA statute and subsequent interpretive statements.

The drone guy did make an interesting point on the show though about FAA having primacy and questioning whether states and local governments had the right to limit drone flying and I liked where he was going with that.
 
https://www.facebook.com/thetakeaway

Breaking News (as CNN would say), Vivek Wadhwa (twitter @wadhwa ) the "expert" who spoke on the above podcast just made this comment in rebuttal to the discussion on The Takeaway Facebook page:
"My greatest fear, as I highlighted in my book Driver in the Driverless Car, is that drones are used for evil, to launch 9-11 type attacks or to bomb schools and public buildings. I doubt that government buildings have defenses against swarms of drones "

In my book: Fear Mongering and Book Selling!
 
  • Like
Reactions: LUIS MARTINEZ
https://www.facebook.com/thetakeaway

Breaking News (as CNN would say), Vivek Wadhwa (twitter @wadhwa ) the "expert" who spoke on the above podcast just made this comment in rebuttal to the discussion on The Takeaway Facebook page:
"My greatest fear, as I highlighted in my book Driver in the Driverless Car, is that drones are used for evil, to launch 9-11 type attacks or to bomb schools and public buildings. I doubt that government buildings have defenses against swarms of drones "

In my book: Fear Mongering and Book Selling!

Wadwah is a hack in love with the sound of his own voice. He tried using information from 2013 and fear-mongering to sell a book and got called out on it. His "expert" opinion is not worth the breathe it took to utter it. For what its worth, (and that's not much) a driverless car can be used in the same manner for a terrorist attack...so do we just ban technology and hide under a rock?
 
  • Like
Reactions: LUIS MARTINEZ
Wadwah is a hack in love with the sound of his own voice. He tried using information from 2013 and fear-mongering to sell a book and got called out on it. His "expert" opinion is not worth the breathe it took to utter it. For what its worth, (and that's not much) a driverless car can be used in the same manner for a terrorist attack...so do we just ban technology and hide under a rock?
Mr. Wadwah, life is hard. Is tougher if you are dumb...
 
  • Like
Reactions: R Martin

For the record, I hate social media but I signed up for Twitter to respond to this clown. "As a commercial UAS pilot, yes I do take exception to your comments. The information you based you worldview on was 5 years out of date and a false representation on the regulations that we operate under today. Its not a perfect world but most of us do obey the regs." They have a character count so I couldn't go any further....apparently their attention span is really short....
 
Mr. Wadwah, life is hard. Is tougher if you are dumb...
Life is hard when you an academic and fail to leave your safe little office and see how the real world works. I work around this type of person unfortunately. Fortunately, there are a lot of the PhDs that are grounded in reality and have their s_*t in one socks (sorry Al. I promise not to do that again.)
 
Life is hard when you an academic and fail to leave your safe little office and see how the real world works. I work around this type of person unfortunately. Fortunately, there are a lot of the PhDs that are grounded in reality and have their s_*t in one socks (sorry Al. I promise not to do that again.)

I was chief of police at a college, PhDs were my nemeses. Finally I told one in an open meeting on campus safety, a Doctorate means you are an expert at one thing, not everything. Never spoke to me again, don't know why.;)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Grumpy and R Martin
I was chief of police at a college, PhDs were my nemeses. Finally I told one in an open meeting on campus safety, a Doctorate means you are an expert at one thing, not everything. Never spoke to me again, don't know why.;)

Sometimes the truth hurts. I think a lot of them lose sight of the fact that they know a whole lot about a very little and a very little about a whole lot.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LUIS MARTINEZ

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
4,277
Messages
37,605
Members
5,969
Latest member
KC5JIM