Ten years ago, personal drones barely existed. Today, they are ubiquitous. They come in all sizes, from tiny palm sized flying cameras to heavy duty industrial drones. They are used by everyone from little kids to researchers, and perhaps by Amazon. There is no question that the popularity of drones has grown wildly in the last few years. While this growth spurt has allowed for some great advances (and awesome videos), it also poses some problems.
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| Regulations are trying to prevent drone users from crashing into, and destroying, beautiful places like this lake in Yellowstone National Park [1]. |
By some estimates, over 1 million drones were sold in 2015. With technology this new and this popular, regulations have difficulty keeping up. Recently, there has been a scramble to create drone regulations quickly and effectively, leading to a patchwork of different laws. The National Park Service, for example, has banned all drones in National Parks. State parks, however, have no such unified approach and some have banned drones while others allow them. Even within one state, laws aren’t consistent. California State Parks have no statewide policy, so rules are set on a park by park basis. With some parks allowing drones and others banning them, it is easy for drone enthusiasts to get confused about where they can fly. Even owners trying their hardest to follow all of the rules in place still face the difficulty of finding the policies. All in all, without any consistent set of rules, we have is a tangled web of rules and regulations that leave people baffled.
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| You’re not the only one struggling with the regulations - Amazon is too! They’ve come up with their own proposed set of air traffic regulations allowing drones to be used for more purposes [2]. |
The FAA recently attempted to fix this problem. They have created a new rule requiring all drones between 0.55 and 55 pounds to register with the FAA before flying outdoors. The registry tries to accomplish three goals: “educating new drone owners, deterring dangerous drone operations, and holding bad actors accountable.” Because the registry was only started in December 2015 it isn’t clear yet if it will be successful in achieving these goals. Some argue that it hasn’t been well publicized enough, and so penalties will mostly fall on drone users who simply didn’t know they needed to register. Others argue that the registry allows the FAA to track drone ownership and hold users accountable when they cause an accident.
I’m not sure what effect the registry will have, but I certainly agree that it hasn’t been well publicized! In fact, until I started doing research for this blog post I had no idea the registry existed. If the registry is going to help make drones safer, it definitely needs to be more widely known. One solution is for the FAA to work with drone manufacturers and sellers to publicize the registration requirement, or to automatically register users.
So for all the drone users out there confused by the regulations, here’s a summary of the major rules:
- If your drone weighs more than 0.55 pounds (250 grams), register it here! For a helpful list of drones that need to be registered, visit Know Before You Fly.
- If you want to fly in a State Park, contact them first! For those of you in California, you can find your park district here.
- Follow all of the other flying regulations. There may be a lot, but the main idea is to avoid flying in a way that might endanger you or someone else. Use your common sense! Fly your drone where you can see it, avoid flying over people, and don’t fly near planes. Most of these regulations should be pretty easy to follow! Know Before You Fly has a great list here.
As drones become more common regulations will continue to improve. Hopefully, they will soon be more straightforward and understandable, but today we aren’t quite there yet. Despite all of this confusion with current regulations, remember that drones are still an awesome piece of technology, and a great way to accomplish things we never could before. From my research project using drones to map bee foraging resources, to Amazon’s plans to use drones for faster deliveries, drones open up a lot of possibilities. It might require a little more research, but as I have found in my research project, drones are worth the effort!
Further Reading:
- “Drone Sales Numbers: Nobody Knows, So We Venture A Guess.” An estimate of drone sales in the past few years.
http://dronelife.com/2015/04/16/drone-sales-numbers-nobody-knows-so-we-venture-a-guess/ - “How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom.” An interesting article about how drones grew in popularity.
http://www.wired.com/2012/06/ff_drones/ - “5 Surprising Drone Uses (Besides Amazon Delivery).” http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131202-drone-uav-uas-amazon-octocopter-bezos-science-aircraft-unmanned-robot/
- “Purposeless Regulation: The FAA Drone Registry.” Article discussing issues with the current registry, and how it could be improved.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/02/purposeless-regulation-the-faa-drone-registry - Register your drone here: https://registermyuas.faa.gov/
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