A Brief Legislative History of UAS
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| Figure 1: Drone Legislation by State: Image Credit drone-registration.net |
Introduction:
Unlike General Aviation which has a long standing legislative history, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles don't have many laws regarding what they are and are not allowed to do. A good deal of the legislation relating to UAS have been done at a state level, with some recent legislation being proposed by the federal government. In the following blog, we will be going over a timeline of the recent (modern) legislative history of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, as well as discussing some of the proposed legislation for UAS.
A Timeline:
Disclaimer
It's important to note that this is not a complete list, but simply a recanting of the more prominent legislative changes and bills that have recently been introduced. A lot of states and countries have discussed a lot of laws that never made it to the floor or really even made the news. Also for simplicity sake, all legislation discussed will be from the United States. - 2013:
- 43 States in the U.S Introduced 130 bills and resoultions relating to UAS. At the end of the year a total of 13 states had enacted 16 new Laws, while 11 states had enacted 16 resolutions. Most of the legislation in this year was based around establishing funding for test sites, for official positions, and to define what counts as a UAV.
- 2014:
- 35 states considered UAS or UAV bills and resolutions, of which 10 states enacted new laws related to "Drones". Bills to note in this year were related to Law enforcement. Some states wanted to establish ways that law enforcement could use UAV's to gather information, while other states proposed banning law enforcement from using UAVs all together.
- 2015:
- 45 States considered 168 bills related to UAVs, of which 20 states passed 26 pieces of legislation. Five other states adopted resolutions related to UAS. Oddly, the Majority of the laws passed in this year related to Voyeurism and hunting.
- 2016:
- Most Notably this year was the FAA releasing 14 CFR part 107.
- 38 States considered legislation related to UAS, of which 18 states passed 32 pieces of legislation. Notable Legislation in this year was how UAS relates to first responder, most of the legislation revolves around giving them immunity if they damage a UAV while on duty.
- 2017:
- 38 states considered legislation, of which 18 states passed 24 pieces of legislation. Most of the legislation this year were continuations of the previous years. Notable legislation is North Dakota exempting drones from being registered if they are under 55 lbs, and Indiana which made a new sex offense charge for using a drone.
- 2018:
- 19 states enacted 31 UAS bills. Most of the legislation passed this year were related to harassing others, or flying over others property. Of note was Michigan banning flying a UAV over a prison.
- 2019:
- 18 States enacted 22 bills addressing UAS. Most of the laws passed were to establish programs, appropriate funds, and privacy protections. The Most Notable Law this year was New Jersey Prohibiting UAS being used to deliver medical marijuana.
New FAA Proposal:
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| Figure 2: ADS-B transponder introduced for drones. |
On December 31st of 2019, the FAA released a proposal for remote Identification of UAVs. This means that a drone must have the ability to provide identifying information, kind of like a transponder for UAS. The hope for this proposal is that it would allow for beyond line of sight operation with UAVs, which would greatly increase the capacity of work that could be done with UAS.
To Conclude:
Although drones have not been around for very long, a lot of legislation has been pushed out in a short time, though not every state has agreed what drones should and should not be allowed to do. The newly proposed legislation by the FAA should hopefully speed along the bureaucratic process and allow the UAS community to push forward even faster.
References:
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