Now military drones are out killing people everyday and News stations like to clump those together with Model RC Flying and thats "Fear Mongering".
That's actually why our multirotor UAVs are called drones. In the early days they were not drones by any definition. Originally drones were either male bees or unarmed training targets. Even calling a MQ-1 Reaper a drone is (or at least was) inaccurate. But connecting harmless hobby aircraft to controversial military UAWs does make a great headline.
All those laws being introduced are just insane. I do not really now what exactly is going on across the great pond but at least in Germany I only know a few people who are at least trying to stick to laws and regulations. They have been changed so frequently over the last years that hardly anybody is able to keep track. Moreover several things went entirely wrong. In case of several laws and regulations you do notice that the people who created them did never had any experience with radio controlled aircraft nor did they talk to anyone who actually does.
As an example we are required to have a so called spotter when not flying LOS. If you ever tried out FPV flying you will have noticed that there is no way a person other than the pilot is able to take over control. You will notice that within 1 minute of flight. Nevertheless we are required to have a person without monitor or goggles sitting next to the pilot in order to take over whenever necessary. Absolutely useless. When I go out flying with friends we usually have a person not flying monitoring the sky and all the person flying are frequently checking the ground for any persons nearby and informing the others. That would have been a useful regulation which actually increases safety.
As a result of those laws made up by uninformed politicians most people are not caring about them anymore. They are broken on purpose because they are useless and do sometimes even interfere with safety.
Another interesting incident which just happened in Hamburg, Germany:
Die Lichtshow mit hunderten beleuchteten Drohnen um die Elbphiharmonie des Künstlerduos Drift umhüllt das Gebäude in Wellen.
www.ndr.de
The article states that an art project with many drones coordinated to print patterns around the Elbphilharmonie was interrupted by foreign "high speed drones". The artists state that these drones collided with their drones and caused several to crash. Due to this new safety concern the other shows were cancelled.
Nevertheless a few days later another article was published:
Es war eine große Enttäuschung für viele: Nach der Premiere ist am Wochenende die Drohnen-Show an der Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg abgesagt worden. Offizieller Grund: Die Kunstaktion sei durch fremde Drohnen massiv gestört worden. Daran gibt es nun aber Zweifel.
www.ndr.de
This article on the other hand states that the police was so far unable to confirm that there were any foreign drones present. Witnesses said that the artists' drones collided midair and therefor crashed in to the river beyond. Furthermore there are lot of videos of the incident but none is showing any "high speed drones" flying by.
What I do not like about that incident is that every newspaper was reporting about the incident in the first place. But only the higher quality media like NDR and a few others are reporting about the fact that the presence of foreign drones has not even been proven so far.