Edmonton police use drone to establish blame in vehicle crashes

Original source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/drone-brings-latest-technology-to-traffic-investigations-1.2951846

Local snapshot (archived 2026-07-03): full-page PDF committed at sources/news/_archive/cbc-drone-27000-collision/cbc-drone-27000-collision.pdf.

Origin of the EPS drone program (2014–2015). CONFIRMED.

• EPS unveiled a $27,000 UAV — a custom-built six-rotor, carbon-fibre/aluminum, battery-operated aircraft built by Chaos Helicopters of Swift Current, SK (NOT an off-the-shelf DJI).
• Payload: remote-controlled digital SLR camera, search light, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera, and a flight data recorder.
• Traffic Section first considered a UAV January 2014; received Transport Canada operations certificate June 2014.
• Used in 15 major collision investigations by early 2015.
• This is the seed of the program that later grew to a 10-drone fleet (see progress-report-eps-new-arsenal.md), with more on order.