I got a drone recently and am having a blast flying it and recording video with it. This is the kind of thing I spent my whole childhood fantasizing about constantly, and now it’s a reality and I am just giddy with excitement the same way I was when I was a little kid and got a new amazing toy. I’m trying to think of interesting things to do with the drone, and one possibility crossed my mind, which you’ve probably ascertained by now from the thread title.
If I hear a report of an accident or a police response incident nearby, on the police and fire scanner which is publicly streaming online, can I go over there with the drone and record it? There are a number of subquestions:
How close can I get?
Would it be a distraction for the police/fire/emts? I do NOT want to distract them. If there’s a chance that the drone would interfere with what they need to do, I don’t want to do this. But, with drones being as common as they are, maybe they’re used to it?
Is there a distance at which I could bring the drone near them and not have a resonable concern about the above?
Do the authorities have drone-detection devices? If they objected to the presence of the drone, what could they do and how would they do it?
Someone here has got to know the answers. And I am not trying to set out to be a public nuisance, which is why I’m asking about it here instead of just going out and doing it.
Not sure about in cities, but FAA regulations prohibit drones near wildfires: https://faa.gov/uas/where_to_fly/airspace_restrictions/ (please, please pay attention to this… firefighting helicopters and planes get grounded/diverted if they detect unauthorized drone activity in an area)
Couldn’t you just call your police or fire non-emergency number and ask them? They are the ones that would know, especially the part about how it would affect THEM while doing their jobs.
It varies by state. It is illegal to do this in 21 states and the District of Columbia.
I found a YouTube video that covers the issue in more detail, by 2 gentlemen who have an ongoing segment on Drones.
Even if it is not specifically prohibited by law, as Missy2U points out, you are invading the privacy of victims, and you are potentially interfering with firefighting equipment, or with police or life flight helicopters.
If you want to know what emergency situations look like, I would suggest volunteering with your local fire department or Red Cross.
I’m picturing an EMT trying to administer CPR to a trauma victim and getting bonked on the head by a drone carrying pizza, hey maybe you could deliver food to them on the scene.
Nobody’s privacy is guaranteed by law if they are in a public place in America. I spent six years as a professional photographer and I know what my rights are under the law to photograph anything in plain sight in a public place. However, I’m not interested in blasting people out there for the public to see, certainly not injured people who have been the victim of accidents. I’m more interested in getting action footage of the police or firefighters at work.
I don’t want to interfere with any potentially life threatening scenarios or distract first responders from doing what they need to do. Maybe I will start by asking someone like with a volunteer fire department, if I can follow them with a drone.
I always advise against asking law enforcement legal questions. We may not actually know the answer and aren’t required to tell you if we do.
And calling a non-emergency number is just going to get you a dispatcher or administrative assistant. They’re really not going to know and not going to be very motivated to find out for you.
Better to consult an attorney, the district attorney, or the state attorney general. You can even ask your state assembly rep or state senator staff to find out what the precise laws are.
Actually, according to the video it’s illegal in 21 states to ambulance chase. Or at least some of those laws are referring to ambulance chasing. (The law in California which is one of those 21 doesn’t say anything about drones.)
The guys in the video for some strange reason conflated the question of using a drone over an emergency situation (say, an accident scene) with ambulance chasing, and so basically the video is a waste of time.
Of course, local laws can vary, but the FAA rules are not always clear, except with some points (airports, areas that have been declared “TFRs,” sporting events, flying directly over people.) The OP is asking about the legality to view these scenes. The laws usually mention being directly above a scene, or interfering with something. With the exception of airports, the laws don’t say how close is considered interfering. With the exception of airports and some specifically cited locations, I can’t find any laws saying specifically from what distance one is considered being present at an emergency location. They mention height, but not lateral distance. Jacquernagy is asking how close he can get, and with regard to temporary scenes, such as police activity or accidents, the laws never seem to mention that.
I mentioned the privacy not as a question of law, but to suggest it might not be the decent thing to do. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should do it.
Volunteering to take pictures or footage of first responders in action is a better way to approach it. Most police and fire departments have a press person who might be a good place to start with this. If you go to a local department website, you should be able to figure out who to contact with your offer.
I’ve worked a little with drone shooters, and the answer is “it depends.” In the US there are FAA no-fly zones (I’m pretty sure the apps that control most drones are pre-programmed with this info) and there is a licensing program, I believe federal, for drone operators; one of the requirements is that you not fly over humans. Putting a drone in the air near first responders seems like a recipe for disaster, especially in a place like CA where there’s very often a chopper circling a crime scene.
If you’re a professional photographer, go ahead and use a drone, but it seems like you’ll get better information elsewhere about legal ways to use it in the place where you are; however, my guess is that if you ask the local police they’ll just tell you it’s always illegal and hang up.
In addition I’ll add an anecdote–I did a big documentary shoot once involving a large crowd and heavy machinery and we were NOT allowed to fly drones to film from above. This didn’t prevent locals from flying guerrilla though, and I wound up buying some of their footage. I wish they hadn’t done this, it was a potential danger in the circumstances, but after the fact what can I do? The footage exists on YouTube for all to see anyway. I can be fair to the folks who made and posted it, or take a “moral stand” and make my movie worse. Note that this was not a case involving first responders.
That means directly above, right? So what if you were above and, say, 500 feet away? How about 100 feet away? How about 50? None of the laws or prohibitions ever address this specifically. They never give an exact lateral distance, except in cases of airports, or some specifically identified installations.
The question isn’t moot for the purpose of this thread–it’s one of the OP’s questions. My question is hypothetical. What if your crew had asked to film above and from a distance? At what distance do they (can they) prohibit the presence of the drone? At what distance would it have been acceptable?
It sounds like it’s based on the effect, not an arbitrary measurement. And I imagine that the distance that caused illegal interference would be highly variable.
I’m thinking more about accidents or police activity, where there are no aircraft involved. Anyway, to say “any distance” is ridiculous, because then every drone in the country is considered to be interfering every time there’s fire anywhere. And there’s no code I’ve seen anywhere that says, “any distance.” The OP is trying know when he or she could be violating the law, but so far it seems in many cases to be entirely up to the discretion or mood of local agents to decide.
You’re the one who brought up lateral distance. The OP did not specify lateral or vertical.
In my case, we wanted a shot from directly above and were told no by local authorities. I didn’t research the local codes as it wasn’t worth the argument even if they were “incorrect” in some sense–the massive cooperation they gave us outweighed the fight I might have had about this.
In fact we did fly a drone with approval, just not directly above the action. I probably should have made that clearer.
However, I do think it’s against regs for a licensed (commercial) operator in the US to fly over humans. This is what drone ops tell me, anyway, and I suppose they know; it’s not in their interest to say otherwise.
The laws you mentioned ban interference, not a distance. I don’t know how that could possibly be codified as an exact distance. Different situations are different.
I would not rely on no-fly zones being pre-programmed. If for no other reasons than the no-fly zones can change size, shape, and can pop up for temporary reasons (like the PotUS coming to town)
Yes, all aviation licensing in the US is through the Feds. Whether or not your drone requires a license depends on weight, please consult the FAA regulations for specifics.
If a vertical distance for avoidance is given (say, 1200 feet) then if no information is given regarding horizontal distance the number given is a good rule of thumb. Thus, if the rule says “keep 1200 vertical feet from X” then stay at least that many feet away horizontally.
In any case, flying a drone in any manner that creates a hazard is prohibited, regardless of distances involved.