Originally Posted by
speedracerntrixie
I don't think that comparing GA with R/C aviation is an apples to apples example. If we were to look at the past 50 years I'm betting there have been hundreds of deaths and millions in property damage due to GA. R/C mignt have 6-8 deaths in the same time frame. Granted with the popularity of quads the risk goes from a model hitting a single or maybe a couple people to bringing down an airliner with 100 plus on board. That is were the FAA should be focusing their efforts. In fact it would appear that is exactly what the FAA iS doing. A great example of this is most fixed sites are hosting events without FAA interference.
Actually, it's closer to "apples to apples" than many want to believe. If you compare the amount of plane crashes in R/C to the number in GA, I think you would find there is a substantial gap and that hundreds of R/C planes crash each year for every GA plane that crashes. The reason no one looks at it in that regard is no one is killed when an R/C crashes and, since there are no records kept about the number of R/C crashes there are each year, we don't know how many people would have died had there been people in those R/C planes when they crashed. Now, let's take this one step further. Speed crashed 6 planes last year, Jester crashed 4 and I crashed one. Why they crashed isn't important, nor is the amount of flights each of us has taken over that year, but how would the FAA respond? Would they pull every one's license, Speed's license or no ones license? Would they require everyone to have a slight log to document our flight hours in, knowing some would falsify their book just to look good? It would be interesting to see how the FAA reacts to those kind of records, wouldn't it?