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tgb comments on New Year's Prediction Thread (2013) - Less Wrong
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Interesting prediction, but I think you're over-estimating the effectiveness of "an average observer." Unless you mean "someone who explicitly is looking for such things" when you say "observer." I go days or weeks without noticing planes in the sky; am I significantly below average as an observer, are drones in cities going to be much more common than planes here, or are drones much more noticeable than planes by 2017? I think one of those would have to be true for this to happen, and I would find any of them surprising.
By average observer, I exclude people actively looking for drones (or other things) in the sky, and I exclude people with training (police? military? spies?) on drone-spotting.
I have been very wrong before! See you (and some drones) in a year!
I just realized that I was assuming "drone" to mean "aerial drone". But it's quite plausible that ground-based drones will take off by 2017, which would almost certainly be more visible than UAVs. Self-driving cars alone could plausibly account for this, if we stretch the use of 'drone' (wikipedia explicitly includes semi-autonomy in its drone page). I'll give my estimates for your predictions at 15% for the 2013 prediction and 20% for the 2017 but note that it will be hard to either confirm or deny either of these predictions unless drones are truly prolific or unused.
As a side note, I work on a drone and don't see one every day.