Flying High: shaping the future of drones in UK cities
The need for Flying High Introducing cars into cities brought chaos. With this new transport technology, we must do better •
Drone technology is already here - we have a choice to actively shape it for the better, or be passive and risk negative outcomes
•
We must avoid making the same mistakes with drones that we did with cars in the 20th century
•
Cities and citizens need to be at the heart of decision-making
•
The UK has a narrow window of opportunity to be at the forefront of the global drone industry, and must act now
A lesson from history There are strong parallels between the introduction of cars and the introduction of drones - for good and for ill In the first few years of the 20th century, cars became mainstream. In 1908, the Model T Ford came on the market. As a car, it was nothing special: slow, underpowered, inelegant. But, mass-produced and built from cheap parts, it radically changed the affordability of motoring. Suddenly, motor vehicles became an economically feasible way to move people and goods. Their numbers exploded. The first Model Ts to come off the production line needed little more than a smooth surface to drive on. Fast forward 110 years, and the basic setup of a car has changed remarkably little - peel away the streamlined exterior and the sophisticated electronics of a modern car, and you still have four wheels, two rows of seats, an internal combustion engine and some gears. But the environment has changed beyond recognition. Just like crowds are something more than a collection of individuals, traffic is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the cars that make it up. And so, a huge array of physical and virtual mechanisms have been developed to help our cities cope with the massive uptake of automobiles. •
10
Laws: around speeding, alcohol, driver licensing, vehicle inspections, emissions standards, parking restrictions.
