&quot;Has there been a controlled test where someone flew a drone purposefully into the rotor of a helicopter?&quot;<p>I&#x27;d be curious to know that. (It reminds me of the apocryphal chicken cannon story  <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.snopes.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;cannon.asp" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.snopes.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;cannon.asp</a>)<p>A few things to keep in mind though. The incident here was at &quot;700-800 feet&quot;, the chance of the heli doing Vmax at that height is pretty small (although in this ase it was described as a police heli chasing a car, so _maybe_ it was getting along a a fair clip?). A quadcopter owner in general is pretty motivated to _not_ have his expensive toy smashed up by aviation traffic, in much the same way as birds probably try pretty hard to dodge planes&#x2F;helis.<p>I think too many people are miscalculating the risks and consequences of &quot;drones&quot; - and it mostly bugs me because they&#x27;re toys I enjoy playing with (which make me somewhat likely to be doing that miscalculating wrong as well, in the opposite direction…) I also enjoy riding motorcycles, and theres a fairli locally-famous quote here from one of the very senior motor vehicle bureaucrats saying &quot;If motorcycles were invented today, we&#x27;d have banned them immediately.&quot; In retrospect that would have been &quot;wrong&quot; - motorcycles are &quot;dangerous&quot;, sure, but about the same order of magnitude of dangerous as high school football or horse riding - activities which we as society deem &quot;a bit dangerous but perfectly acceptable&quot;.<p>And while I know neither you nor I have a dog in the US public opinion fight, I find the hysterical handwringing over the dangers of hobby drone immensely hypocritical from a country where 2&#x2F;3rds of the elected politicians are deeply in bed with the NRA, and there&#x27;s an entire industry profiting largely from locking young black men up for use and sale of pot... When the &quot;drone&quot; accident rate approaches within say three orders of magnitude of, say, the drink driving accident rate or even the falling-off-ladders rate, perhaps the media hysteria and the calls from non-participating parties to &quot;ban it all immediately and lock everybody up!&quot; just make people look ignorant and spiteful.<p>(And Jacques, not sure why I&#x27;m currently engaging in &quot;robust discussion&quot; on at least two threads in HN with you right now - know that I respect you greatly, while disagreeing occasionally...)