Morons with Laser Pointers

Remember when I told you about those two guys that went to jail for shining a laser at an airplane (see Fun and Games)?  Well they aren't the only morons out there!  I ran a search in Google for news containing the words "laser," "shining," and "arrested" to see how many people out there are getting in trouble with their laser pens.  I checked the entire list that Google spat out for the year of 2010.  I made a cumulative plot of incidents that related to idiots shining laser pointers at police, cars, helicopters, and airplanes.  By the way, some news articles did use terms like "moron" and "idiot!"  Anyway, take a gander at the figure:

There were 64 news reports that were relevant, which means that there was an average of one news report every 6 days.  Now that doesn't seem like a lot, but I was only looking at Google news reports that had particular phrases, and not all incidents make the news.  My calculations are smaller than the actual amount by a significant factor.  I found a more accurate plot from laserpointersafety.com (after all my work... should have gone there in the first place!).  These are just reported incidents though.  Take a look:

My calculations off of the figure suggest that there are, on average, 12 incidents per day for the year of 2010!  Here are some numbers that the FAA give:

• 2010: 2,836 (7.8 incidents each night)
• 2009: 1,527 (4.2 incidents each night)
• 2008: 955 (2.6 incidents each night)
• 2007: 643 (1.8 incidents each night)
• 2006: 420 (1.2 incidents each night)
• 2005: 311 (0.9 incidents each night).

There are obviously some disagreements with the plot and the numbers, but it is clear that the rate of incidents is increasing, and the yearly numbers are staggering.

These plots have shown us just how many morons with laser pointers are out there.