Originally Posted by Flight Risk

I can see how drones for news, traffic, police work, etc. could be so much cheaper than putting putting up full scale helicopters.
I'm curious what sort of fail-safe requirements these drones might have. I'm concerned with the quads losing one engine and they go down. Wouldn't it make sense to require six or more rotors, although I'm not sure they could be flyable on five of the six rotors, and more rotors is more chances that something fails. How about requiring a parachute to deploy? I can see one of these hovering over heavy traffic and dropping, causing a massive accident. No doubt they would fly these much lower over traffic which could cause distractions, and being so cheap compared to helicopters they would no doubt have dozens of these zipping around. Then add in the UPS drones and everything else flitting around and I see problems. Are they going to allow these to fly with the cheapest Chinese lipo's, motors, and receivers or will they need extensive testing and certification? How about routine inspections and maintainance by certified FAA agents?
Remember the days when we dreamed of everyone having a flying car? Can you imagine the problems with a million commuters in their flying cars over Los Angeles?