Formerly drone-phobic New York to deploy lifeguard UAVs at city beaches this summer

It took New York City ages to get over its aversion to drones, but now that it has its leaders are pushing for their deployment in expanding numbers – including helping beach lifeguards reach drowning victims faster.

New York mayor Eric Adams announced the city will be positioning drones starting this summer at beaches in “Coney Island, and they’re going to grow from there.” The craft will be used in similar ways they have for years in Australia, where lifeguards not only rely on those aerial perspectives to spot people in trouble, but also drop inflatable buoys to prevent them from drowning. 

Given that long-established Aussie example – and the seven drowning deaths off New York beaches in the past two years – the city is coming to the drone rescue party rather late. But city officials only began liberalizing the formerly near total ban on UAV flights over the population-packed area last July. And now they seem in a rush to make up for lost time by widening diversified deployment of the craft.

“I think it can be a great addition to saving the lives… over the summer,” said Adams at a widely reported press conference, where the self-proclaimed “tech geek” noted drones would be equipped with loudspeakers to communicate with people in danger and direct lifeguards rushing to them. “Now you have eyes in the sky telling you, ‘The person is straight ahead, the person is off to your right, the person went under in front of you’.” 

Since announcing the easing of New York’s formerly air-tight permitting process for drone use, Adams has overseen wider deployment of UAVs in ways he says will improve residents’ lives. Unfortunately, those have included police surveillance of backyard parties generating neighbor complaints, which opponents have not irrationally called a threat to privacy rights. 

Their stationing at the 14 miles of beaches along municipal waterfront to assist short-handed lifeguards, however, probably won’t generate too much protest. Indeed, previous critics of Adams’ gung-ho approach to drones didn’t take issue with their deployment at lifeguard stands, but rather how that might be used to acclimate people to having the craft more frequently watching them by police and other security services in other settings.

But their deployment at beaches also isn’t exactly new. Last year New York began flying drones off popular summer spots to keep watch for what then were a rising number of shark sightings and strikes– another use case Australia has benefitted from for years.

But there is one way the city may be passing Australia’s leading role in UAV operation among the sandy set.

In a video released Friday, New York City Police deputy commissioner for operations, Kaz Daughtry, indicated the craft may be flown from lifeguard stands out to struggling swimmers from a centralized remote position downtown. That beyond visual line of sight method would allow pilots avoid getting sand in their shoes – but do little to improve their pasty-white, office-bound miens. 

Image: Jessica D. Vega/Unsplash