T0609 Drone Road User Distraction

Technical advice to National Highways' Drones Governance Hub & GG 954 - Drones Operations Standard Owner

National Highways is seeking specialist technical consultants to undertake research to understand whether separation distances between drones and road users, operated by/on behalf of National Highways, can be safely reduced from the currently permitted 50 metres as defined in GG 954 - Drones Operations.

Specifically, National Highways is seeking to establish whether flights at distances as low as 15 metres can be undertaken without distracting drivers, enabling the potential for many more drone flights to meet growing business needs.

This approach is based on the recommended outcome from the work package 'Road User Distraction from Drones Trial Specification' (see Appendix 1) of previous task T0323 Drone Operating Standards and Requirements. This will be achieved through implementing, and supplementing where appropriate, Phase 1 of the Road User Distraction from Drones Trial Specification developed as part of Task T0323 Drone Operating Standards & Requirements.

Should Phase 1 be inconclusive, the Phase 2 specification shall be refined based on the Phase 1 conclusions.

It should be noted that the original 'Road User Distraction from Drones Tial Specification' developed as part of T0323 Drone Operating Standards & Requirements only sought to consider the distraction effects caused by drones being operated as close as 20m from the strategic road network. However, the scope of these trials has been expanded to distances as low as 15m, based on the CAA's Atypical Air Environment proposals, as set out in CAP 2968. The CAA's proposals seek to allow Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone operations 'within 15m of a permanent linear structure' - considered to be a volume of airspace where it can be reasonably anticipated there to be a reduced number of conventionally piloted aircraft due to proximity of ground infrastructure.

These Atypical Air Environments are intended to allow infrastructure asset owners, such as National Highways, to conduct a wider range of drone operations to support their operation.