German Rail Looking to Release DRONES

I didn't see any posts when searching, so here we go:

While I understand that this is technically a good reason, as graffiti is never a fun thing to clean off, it's one of those "Pandora's Box" things that can't be done. I guarantee you, that if I saw one of these near by, it'd be BB gun practice.

More importantly, what are they going to do if a drone finds somebody? I know they say "to be used in court"... but really: Send out thugs? Call the police? So whose drone does it become at that point? Would it now be a privately owned police drone?

German Rail testing DRONES

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's national railway operator will soon be flying small drones over its tracks, bridges and stations to keep a watchful eye out for vandals spraying graffiti. Deutsche Bahn said Tuesday some 14,000 incidents of graffiti were reported in 2012 alone, costing €7.6 million euros ($9.8 million) in cleanup costs. In the coming weeks it will test whether drones might help as a deterrent, give Deutsche Bahn the chance to dispatch security personnel, and provide evidence that could be used in court. Germany-based microdrones GmbH produces the test units worth about 60,000 euros each. They are battery-powered four-rotor helicopters that can be equipped with thermal or regular cameras. They can remain airborne 80 minutes and have a 40-kilometer (25-mile) range on autopilot, reaching speeds of 54 kph (34 mph).

Ask people about graffiti these days and they say they dont really notice it or care, advertisements are FAR MORE unsightly in my opinion.

How about spending the money on something that matters?

if you spend money on things that matter, you can't siphon money off that thing that didn't matter and use it for something secret and make it look like the thing that didn't matter was being handled.

If you believe the drones are to find visual vandals, than I have some thousands of acres of URANUS for sale.

reply to post by Tranceopticalinclined


oh i totally agree.

"not for anything but making sure the 'vandals' dont paint pretty pictures on our otherwise grey and boring trains and sidings!"....... "but of course if we see any terrorists or criminals doing anything, we will fire the missiles at them we fit just in case a riot breaks out"

Basically they are just putting in more security cameras, but they are in form or a drone-copter because the railways are big and can't install security cameras along all the track.

reply to post by KilroyRock

More importantly, what are they going to do if a drone finds somebody? I know they say "to be used in court"... but really: Send out thugs? Call the police? So whose drone does it become at that point? Would it now be a privately owned police drone?

I would assume that they would attempt to get the drone in as close as possible in order to try and get a reading of the face or something. If this is so, they would then try to match up the picture with ID pictures; which wouldn't be difficult as every person that is (legally) in Germany has a biometric picture of them stored somewhere.