York County should write rules for drones

In the not-so-distant future, that buzzing you hear might be more than just bees, mosquitoes or the neighbor’s weed whacker. It might be the sound of a hovering drone.

York County officials are right to consider ways to ensure that drones don’t threaten public safety before the sky is thick with the unmanned aerial vehicles.

Drones currently are associated mostly with military uses, including surveillance, the bombing of enemy targets and killing terrorists. But drones also have a host of other potential uses, ranging from helping to locate people lost in the wilderness to delivering pizzas.

Law enforcement agencies are eager to incorporate drones in their arsenals to help find suspects on the run, survey hostage situations, track speeders and perform any number of other tasks. Farmers already use drones to spray fields. Forest rangers use them to help douse fires. Realtors use them to take videos of homes they are trying to sell.

And the list is sure to grow. But Newton’s law applies to drones: What goes up must come down. And county officials are worried that drones might start coming down in the wrong places.

Officials with the Carowinds amusement park recently complained to the county about a drone spotted flying above the park. Park operators fear that unregulated drones could crash into rides, hurting or killing visitors.

Carowinds’ policy forbids drones from flying above the park and warns that any unauthorized drone will be reported to the Federal Aviation Administration, which is drawing up regulations that would restrict where, when and how drones can operate. But Carowinds general manager Mike Fehnel also would like to see the state and county establish rules for drone operation.

“Technology is moving faster than the Legislature,” Fehnel said. “We just want to get ahead of this.”

County Councilman Michael Johnson of Fort Mill agrees. He has urged the county to impose countywide restrictions on drone flights.

The issue is broader than simply stopping drone flights over Carowinds. The unmanned flying objects pose a potential hazard for any large gathering, such as a sporting event in a stadium, or to people in any heavily populated area.

They also threaten people’s privacy with their ability to be an eye in the sky for unscrupulous snoops. And what’s to prevent someone from arming a drone and using it to attack a person or structure?

The county and other regulatory bodies would be prudent to enact some rules before the use of drones gets out of hand. As Fehnel notes, we need to stay a step ahead of the technology.

More drones are practically an inevitability. And it is likely that most of them will be used for practical, peaceful purposes.

The county, after all, already uses a drone owned by “Pennies for Progress” manager Phil Leazer to shoot aerial footage of road projects to use in presentations. Aerial videos might also be a great way to market sites at industrial parks or other potential commercial property owned by the county or cities.

But the prospect of drones being used for nefarious purposes or losing power and falling from the sky is frightening. The world had to invent new traffic laws as the number of cars on the highway increased.

We now will have to invent new laws to cover drones as the overhead buzzing increases.

This story was originally published March 25, 2015 at 4:56 PM with the headline "York County should write rules for drones."