A hefty camera-toting multicopter crashed on the track of the mens slalom race at Madonna di Campiglio – just a few meters behind Austrian athlete Marcel Hirscher.
Rumor has it that the operator of this craft, a professional working for an AV production company hired by Italian TV, tried to steer away from the crowd and thus crashed on the slope.
Needless to say, this is not the news we need right now, and it’s water on the mills of those who want to essentially put and end to the entire hobby, except for small toys lighter than 250 grams. The sad fact is that RC models are sometimes involved in deadly accidents, for example back in 2006 when the hungarian military was suspected to have jammed the 35MHz band, causing the plane of a german pilot flying at a competition to kill two spectators, or like the Swiss accident of 2010, when a scale model of an AT-6 plummeted down on a 45-year old man, also lethally injuring him.
The thing to keep in mind here however is that life is full of risks and one cannot have perfect safety. And if it were true that we ought to do whatever is neccessary to curb any risks, then individuals would not be allowed to drive cars, and there would be no inflatable swimming pools sold in stores. We mitigate these risks by driving carefully and by watching over our kids so they don’t drown. It’s not perfect, but we do get the benefit of individual transportation, water playtime in our own garden, and the joy of RC model flight.
Perhaps flying a large and heavy quadrotor at a big sports event is not the best way to go about this though.
Full video footage of Marcel Hirscher’s run and the crash after the break.
YouTube / Nicolas Garcia – via Iframely
