Those incidents are extremely rare, and the research you quoted while good on paper is not representative of the real world, someone who owns a mavic or phantom et. Is unlikely to be flying out like a nob. For one they don't want to damage their £1000+ drone.
The likes of drones found on ebay for 30 quid are absolutely harmless, if you look at the enthusiast grade drones then again they aren't going to be owned by the sort of people who would fly them irresponsibly. For a start you need a certain amount of intelligence just to get them working let alone fly.
Could a drone fall out of the sky and hit someone sure it can, as can a plane, bird or meteor for that matter.
Likely hood of it happening though, pretty damn slim.
They're
fairly rare... But I know of several commercial surveyors who've crashed their Phantom 4s directly into the front of oncoming trains, and about a dozen others whose drones all suffered failures resulting in them crashing into our customers' gardens. Luckily no-one I know has crashed something bigger like a Matrice 300... yet.
But the fact is that it still can and still does happen. It doesn't need to actually hurt a person or disable a vehicle in order to present a problem or result in an accident.
You'll find irresponsible bell-ends at
all levels, as well as genuine accidents with properly responsible parties too. Drone size or cost is not a sufficient factor by which to legislate human behaviour.
We still need one law to cover everyone fairly, which is what they're aiming for.
I'm not aware of so many incidents with model aircraft before cheap, easily accessible drones became a thing either.
I'd certainly be in favour of every drone being registered and the requirement for proof of Flyer/Op ID before you could buy one. Maybe proof of some kind of training, even if it's just the DMARES or something slightly better. Home-built drones would be difficult to regulate like that, though. Same for drones having a transponder that broadcasts certain data, although I draw the line at anyone being able to ID the operator and locate their position. The US has taken that one too far.
They do, but only for people who fly responsibly and therein lies the issue.
Actually it helps there too - If you drive a car on the road, people will
assume you're licenced and safe.
We need a culture where people assume the same about flying drones... but right now it's the opposite. Most people see a drone and assume you're a **** out to cause mischief and block runways or something. This is what led to that guy filming quite legitimately for an estate agent, getting his drone shot at by an irate neighbour, followed by that neighbour coming out and shoving a gun* in his face. The fact that pilots like him get hassled so often they routinely wear body cams is a big concern for me.
*It may have turned out to only be a G10 air pistol, but to most people it's still a gun in the face and he still broke several laws, while still hassling someone doing their perfectly legitimate job.