How to fly drones over roads safely? Study what happens if they crash

In a loop of high-speed video recorded at a blistering 30,000 frames per second, a drone slams into a car windshield. The shell cracks. Pieces of a propeller snap off.

Most safe drone flights aren’t supposed to end in crashes. However, the recorded crash took place in one of Virginia Tech’s impact labs, where controlled collisions have served as testing for safer cars, football helmets, and even toys. Here, collisions illuminate risk and point to ways to reduce it, and, now, are helping lead to new ways to use drones.

Since 2018, State Farm® has been working with Virginia Tech to safely incorporate drones into our claims operations. However, a key provision restricting commercial drone use in urban and suburban areas is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) prohibition against flying over moving vehicles. The concern is that a drone smashing into the windshield of a moving car could obliterate the driver’s view of the road or, worse, barrel into the car injuring occupants.

Safety has always been important to State Farm. However, under current rules, a claims drone operator assigned to inspect two houses across a busy street from each other would have to finish the first inspection and land. Then, the operator would have to walk the drone across the street and start all over just a few feet away.

The results of the Virginia Tech testing showed otherwise. The new data demonstrated that a small parachute-equipped drone won’t actually damage a car traveling at average in-town speed limits. The slim margin between a virtually pristine windshield and a destroyed one drew a clear boundary around low-risk scenarios. The data showed that as long as potential relative impact speeds never exceeded 62 mph, flights over moving vehicles presented minimal risk. The FAA agreed.

As a result, the FAA granted State Farm permission to fly over moving vehicles at the end of 2020.

This not only allows State Farm to increase efficiency while handling homeowners’ claims, but also helps pave the way for the drone industry for drone operation over moving vehicles in certain situations.

Getting this waiver for rapidly evolving technology being used in new ways, means finding ways to define, quantify and categorize risks in new ways.

“State Farm is committed to finding innovative opportunities that support safety and efficiency in our claims handling,” shared State Farm Manager Todd Binion. “If we look for ways to use data to help overcome regulatory challenges, we can move forward in other ways where drones can be used to benefit consumers across multiple industries.”