If I may offer another view, looking at the angle the drone was flying down at, that was going into the ground no matter what. Look at the :46 mark. And at :45 you can clearly see that machine is coming out of the trees. My Spidey senses think TWO separate things are happening here. I think the drone was actually out of control by hitting the tree to the left of the cyclist and was spiraling down to a crash. It was just bad timing that the cyclist was right there at that moment. A drone op would not be flying a Phantom at that steep of an angle anticipating pulling up at the last minute in order to get a cool shot. For all we know the operator had absolutely nothing to do with the race and it was just wrong place wrong time. The angle that the drone is going down at prior to the crash is just too much for me to accept that it was a cool shot gone wrong. More like out of control because of a prior collision. Before we jump to the worst case scenario of a reckless drone pilot who almost killed a cyclist wanting a great shot, accidents do happen (not absolving him of flying within the Class D airspace as a previous post claims), but still... trek accidents happen all the time and this seems to be in that vein.
Last edited:
