UAV/Drone accident in Geraldton, WA

[John Eacott]

It had to happen sooner or later:

Unfortunate event as Triathlete sustains head injuries from drone

A competitor in today’s Endure Batavia Triathlon has been taken to hospital after an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) otherwise known as a drone, fell from the sky hitting her on the head.

The competitor, Raija Ogden was heading into her second lap of the run leg of the race on the Foreshore when the incident occurred.

The remote-controlled copter struck her head and she fell to the ground.

Raija is the wife of defending champ Courtney Ogden who came in second place in today’s race shortly after the incident occurred.

The UAV operated and owned by local videographers New Era Photography and Film were covering the event with live footage and owner Warren Abrams said the circumstances looked to be suspicious.

“We will be conducting a full investigation of what happened but it looks as though someone has hacked into our system,” he said.

The Geraldton Triathlon Club released a statement expressing their sincere apologies about the accident.

“In relation to the incident that occurred today at the Endure Batavia Triathlon involving an aerial camera and competitor Raija Ogden, the Geraldton Triathlon Club wish to state their sincere apologies to Mrs Ogden,” the statement said.

“Mrs Ogden has been treated by paramedics on location and the club have been advised she is in a stable condition following the incident, with minor injuries sustained to her head.

“Geraldton Triathlon Club President Simon Teakle, said the club are very disappointed that this has occurred.

“We are currently in discussions with the videographers to assess how the incident occurred and the circumstances surrounding the accident,” he said.

“This incident should never have occurred and a full investigation will be conducted in conjunction with the videographers involved.”

http://everythinggeraldton.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tri-accident-1024x682.jpg

Everything Geraldton (http://everythinggeraldton.com.au/2014/04/06/unfortunate-event-triathlete-sustains-head-injuries-drone/#prettyPhoto)

[Art of flight]

Is that a can of worms I hear being opened?

Amazon will be looking at this case amongst many others no doubt....

[cattletruck]

I really hope the CAA and the legal fraternity comes down like a ton of bricks on this case, it really is unfair to the competitor who was only focused on giving her best performance during the event after months of training for it.

This could have easily been a death as is inherently obvious in most of these kinds of UAV operations there is rarely any contingency for loss of control.

I hope you have a speedy recovery Raija.

[chopjock]

There's a rumour the drone just crashed on the track then the runner tripped over it according to eye witnesses.
This could just be press sensationalising again.

[Art of flight]

I see these things being used extensively to cover such events, and even the recent Winter olympics, they're everywhere. I was recently on the West coast of Scotland and hiked to a (fairly) remote beach to do some photography, the only other person there was flying one and I spent most of my time with one eye on it, just in case. I hadn't realised how big (and noisy) some of these things were. I was very impressed to see the operator bring it to the hover about a foot away from him so that he could make an adjustment to the camera! Not sure I'd want my digits near one with the rotors turning....

[Smokeyboy]

Good thing it was a drone and not a helicopter!

[CRAZYBROADSWORD]

For those in the uk such an operator requires a CAA aproved ops manual and a flying licence plus the drone must be able to operate without command input ie it's returns to its start point via onboard gps .

[John Eacott]

Westpac Rescue had a near miss only a couple of weeks ago, near Sydney:

Newcastle Herald (http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2175901/rescue-helicopters-near-miss-with-drone-at-broadmeadow/)

A NEAR-miss between a Westpac rescue helicopter and a drone above Broadmeadow is under investigation by safety authorities.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau will interview the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service crew involved in the incident, which occurred near the crew’s Broadmeadow base on Saturday night.

The helicopter was returning from the John Hunter Hospital about 10pm when it spotted lights at about 1000 feet.

Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service spokesman Glen Ramplin said the crew originally thought the lights belonged to a larger aircraft further away.

When they realised it was a smaller object nearby, the crew took evasive action to avoid a collision.

‘‘We’ve seen quite a few [drones] around but this one was at quite a height,’’ Mr Ramplin said.

‘‘If you had run into it, it could [have been dangerous].’’

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s report is expected in June.

The bureau is also investigating two hot air ballooon incidents in the Hunter over recent months.

A balloon spotted in restricted airspace west of Maitland Airport on Saturday is also under investigation.

Three separate crews reported spotting the balloon in the area as it descended towards Cessnock, the ATSB website shows.Separately, a report on a balloon draping over power lines at Broke in December is due this month.

[Slatye]

CRAZYBROADSWORD - Australia has lots of requirements like that too. Unfortunately it's very hard to keep track of the drones, since they're so cheap these days. The result is that, just like laser pointers, lots of idiots have them.

It'll be interesting to see what the outcome of this one is. Three obvious possibilities:

- Vehicle failure. No real excuse for this - if you're flying over people you should have redundancy. An octocopter (that can fly with a failed motor) isn't all that much more expensive than a quadrotor.

- Operator error. If the operators have a UAV operator's certificate then this should be handled just like pilot error in a normal plane/helicopter. If they don't have a UAV operator's certificate then I'm pretty sure the penalties are already listed in the legislation.

- External stuff - someone hacked into it. Seems a bit unlikely, but I suppose it's possible. Could this be treated as a hijacking? If so, the people responsible could be in for a whole world of pain.

[chute packer]

Regarding the hacking, its unlikely. The system used is a frequency hopping type within the 2.4Ghz band. It hops around 80 channels within the band multiple times a second, more likely if loss of signal was involved is a 2.4 network nearby (runners ID tags at the finish line?) could have swamped the signal, either way, still operator error.