This paper explores the applicability of small quadcopter drones for traffic surveillance and roadway incident monitoring. Small quadcopter drones have gained significant attention from the public as it is easy to control, safe, economic, and flexible for flight. With two quadcopter drones equipped with video capturing and transmission devices and a ground station, pilot tests have been conducted to examine the effectiveness of quadcopter drones for traffic surveillance and incident monitoring. Compared to existing traffic data collection practices, quadcopter drones appear highly beneficial as they are capable of covering a wide range of data collection sites, which enables them to capture traffic data of every approach of an intersection at a time. Wide-range visual coverage also facilitates measurements of queue length and delays of intersections. The quality of video footage collected by the quadcopter drone appears challenging for video analytics while it is sufficient enough for manual data collection. In addition, instrumented with a long-range video streaming device, it is able to conduct instant traffic incident monitoring where no traffic surveillance devices are available. Pilot tests clearly demonstrates the quadcopter drone would be suitable for real-time roadway incident monitoring, though up to 20 seconds of communication lag was observed under low cellular signal strength.