Drones

In this post, we will be focusing on drone technology. The ethical question that we will be asking is that should the Federal Aviation Administration make a decision to approve the flying of drones and more importantly on a large scale as in commercial deliveries such as Amazon is proposing?  Our ethical position on this question is that drones will pose a high volume of safety issues.

As previously discussed in many other posts, journals, newspapers, peer review papers etc., when we mention safety in regards to drone technology, we mean that flying drones safely over people of beyond the visual sight of designated pilots. Our focus will be on businesses to use small drones. Currently, there are proposed policies to take care of these safety issues. Although the Federal Aviation Administration decision, as expected, limits approval to drones weighing less than 55 pounds to operate during twilight only if the drone has anti-collision lights and also must not exceed a speed of 100 miles per hour, drones will still be dangerous in the skies to both commercial and private airplanes and also to people on the ground.

We can take a company like Amazon into consideration here. If there is finally an authorization for businesses to use small drones and Amazon decides to carry out its plans to use small drones for delivery purposes then there is a very high possibility that there are going to be hundreds of thousands of drones in the skies at any given second due to how fast the company is growing. And depending on weather conditions and the altitude at which these drones would be flying, they pose a high risk to airplanes and people on the ground. Even if the Federal Aviation Administration decision takes effect and these drones of specific weights fly during specific times at specific speed per hour, there would still be air traffic to begin with. Think of it, drones are controlled remotely from unknown locations by individuals and will not always be able to identify risks immediately to react to them. This would be our first safety problem.

Another focus of the Federal Aviation Administration is to lower altitude to 400 feet from 500 feet and lower age limit for operators to 16 from 17. These rules are “intended to create certainty and predictability for safe, authorized operations – to protect all users of the airspace as well as those of use on the ground.” Said Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation Committee. I personally do not know how we all feel about having teenagers fly drones over our heads and only God knows the amount of experience they have; how easily they can identify risks, emergency landing techniques or procedures, emergency landing zones etc.

We believe that there is a lack of public policy regarding the use of small drones and our personal proposed public policy is not to authorize businesses to use small drones. The reason for this proposal is to ensure the safety of both airplanes in the skies and people on the ground. Firstly, a defective drone could easily crash into anything. This could be an airplane, an electricity pole, a building, a person or people on the ground etc. Tragedy could always be likely the outcome of such incidents, which could injure lots of people and cause multiple deaths. From a Utilitarian’s point of view, this proposal will benefit the majority of people. We understand that a good percentage of people would argue this proposal but we do not want to end up having our technology use or control us. Before the invention of drones, we have always had a good delivery system by air and road; airplanes and vehicles to be precise. These forms of delivery has its pros and cons but we all can believe that even if airplanes are used to deliver orders and products, the final delivery is made by a vehicle. And these are all physically operated by well-trained individuals and have hands on the machine whenever operating. In the case of a drone, the remote controlling of it makes a big difference.