Drone Laws: What You Need to Know
What are the existing drone laws, and why do you need to be aware of them?
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Drone Laws: What You Need to Know
Chances are that you’ve seen drones on the news, whether at a sporting event like the US Open, on the Whitehouse lawn, in a volcano, or perhaps just capturing some awesome cinematography. Drones, which are also known as Unmanned Aircraft Systems, have been a hot topic for lawmakers in almost every state due to their huge rise in popularity and decreasing price.
If you’re not familiar with drones, they are essentially remote control helicopters. Drones started out like many other model aircrafts: they were a fun way for hobbyists to tinker and come up with new designs to see how long and far they could be flown. As electronics became more powerful, batteries became lighter, and materials got lighter, different drone designs and control systems became popular.
The most common drone design you’ll see on the market is known as a ‘Quad Copter,” which is a helicopter with four independent propellers. Without getting deep into the physics of it, the four propellers allow the drone to move in any direction with an extreme amount of control.
But why have drones risen in popularity recently? For starters, drones used to be extremely expensive, and have begun to drop considerably as many different companies began to produce more and better quality drones. The first drone I purchased was about two years ago, and since then it has been outpaced by many other drones on the market in terms of how fast it goes, the battery life, and most other aspects.
One of the primary uses for drones today is taking amazing cinematography. For example DJI’s Phantom 3 drone costs about $500, but has a camera mounted to it that is better than most models of GoPro’s on the market, and has a range of over a mile! If you’ve never seen video or pictures taken by a drone, I recommend the following link.
The ability of drones to carry light weight objects and take awesome video makes them perfect for chronicling sporting events, or inspecting hard-to-access places such as roof tiles, canopies of rainforest trees, or even in the heart of an erupting volcano. However, the ability to take high resolution video from a distance has a lot of people anxious because of the other, more nefarious uses of drones. For example, paparazzi have used drones to fly over fences, into backyards, and have the ability to invade privacy way more than ever before.
Drones have even been known to crash into spectators of an event, which can cause significant injury due to the propellers, or just the sheer weight of a drone hitting them. Drones have even been a cause for concern for the White House when, last May, a man lost control of his drone and it ended up on the front lawn.
All of this to say that there aren’t many existing laws surrounding drones. The main agency in charge of making decisions when it comes to drones is the FAA or Federal Aviation Administration. As of now, you do not need FAA approval to fly a drone for recreational use as long as you stay under 400 ft. There’s also a nationwide law that prohibits any drone from being flown in a national park.
The FAA has begun to outline other guidelines for flying drones, such as speed (they must fly slower than 100 mph), eyesight of the operator, proximity to pedestrians, and weight (less than 55 lbs). These issues are not yet true laws, but may soon come into effect.
But there are regional laws that prohibit certain activities with drones. Note that I’m only going to mention a few, so check with your local law enforcement agency if you want to know more. In my current home of California, it is against the law to take pictures of anyone who would normally have the expectation of privacy (say in a backyard). It’s also against the law to take a picture where a person would have been trespassing.
In Colorado, it’s against the law to use drones for hunting. In Connecticut and Wisconsin, it’s a felony to mount a weapon to a drone, and in Alabama, drones cannot be used to harass fishermen or hunters. In both Texas and Tennessee, it is against the law to perform surveillance on property that is not yours.
Now that drones have become so popular, many people are using them for commercial uses. In the beginning this was mostly for photography, although drones can be used for inspections of hard to reach places such as large wind turbines, radio towers, and even for home inspections and real estate deals. Drones are even being used in agriculture to check on crop conditions. What’s really interesting is that you are not allowed to fly a drone in the US without special permission from the FAA if you intend to do so for business.
Take the following scenario. A farmer can fly a drone over his orchard for fun, but if uses what he sees (say crop damage in a particular area) for business decision making, then it’s technically illegal. In order to fly a drone for commercial purposes you need to get an allowance from the FAA. I believe the government is having a hard time keeping up with the sudden explosion of drone usage.
It will be really interesting to see how companies like Amazon and Google use drones for their business uses. Amazon has made statements on using drones for instant deliveries, but it’s really too soon to see if that will be viable from a business point of view.
For more information on commercial flying of drones, and for some rock solid guidelines for flying your drone, check out the following links:
Now I really want to hear from you. Have you ever flown a drone? Are you creeped out by drones? What laws do you think should govern drones? I’d love to hear what you think so please post on my Facebook Page.
Well, that’s it for today! Be sure to check out all my earlier episodes at techtalker.quickanddirtytips.com. And if you have further questions about this podcast or want to make a suggestion for a future episode, post them on Facebook QDTtechtalker.
Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
