On June 11, a woman cheering for her friends at the 5 km Rainbow Challenge in Beloeil, Qc, was hit by a DJI Phantom that was flying near the runners. The following images, captured by a UAV operator, VTOL-X inc., flying at a safe distance from the crowd with an authorization from Transport Canada, briefly show the incident.
The woman was sent to the hospital and diagnosed with a cervical sprain. She has not been able to go back to work since and is suing Rosaire Turcotte, the operator of the drone. Transport Canada and the Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
Mr. Turcotte was gathering images for the local community TV station. The man said he took a pilot course on the Internet and thought he operated the UAV in the “safest way possible”.
The fact that Mr. Turcotte flew is drone less than 9 km from to aerodromes without an SFOC and above a gathering of people clearly demonstrate some weakness in his “training”.
An operation like this one would have required an SFOC and it would have been granted only if the UAV was to be flown at a safe distance form people, which was clearly not the case here.
A person with little to no aviation knowledge can falsely feel safe after following an online course. It can happen in the UAV field when the training only glances over the required subjects like regulation, theory of flight, meteorology and human factors. It is almost impossible for an online course to covers the subjects with the sa depth as a course with an instructor.
No doubt Mr. Turcotte did not want to end his flight on the victim’s head. But his false feeling of safety and his little knowledge in aviation created by his short online training brought this operator to continue with a dangerous operation even if another UAV pilot warned him about the risks.
Chances are high that with the new UAV regulation, that should be published in 2017, operators will need to pass an exam to obtain a UAV pilot permit. By then, Transport Canada encourages operators to follow a course that is compliant with the TP15263 publication to fulfill the knowledge requirement to obtain an SFOC. Proper training is one of the solutions to avoid that kind of incident.
Source: http://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2016/06/22/une-dame-blessee-par-un-drone-a-beloeil