State lawmakers draft drone regulations

ATLANTA - Estimates are that about a million Americans got drones for Christmas last year and now state lawmakers want to make sure they have some level of control over how they are used in Georgia. 

"Everyone on every street corner is going to own an unmanned aircraft," said Rep. Kevin Tanner, R - Dawsonville. 

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Tanner is the primary sponsor of House Bill 779, which would limit where people can fly drones and use them to take photos. 

"We've got all these little aircrafts flying around that we've never had before over homes, over people's property, over their heads--we need to make sure people are safe," he added. 

HB 779 would would ban taking off or landing a drone on private or public property without the property owner's permission.  It would also make it illegal for someone to fly a drone over a public roadway or highway in a way that would "cause a hazard to a motorist." 

While that may seem restrictive, Tanner said his legislation would leave a lot of the final decision-making up to local governments. 

"I think you'll see a lot of cities and counties take the opportunity to create areas that  are very much drone-friendly," Rep. Tanner explained.  "Other areas around ballfields, they probably do not want drones.  But that will be up to and in my personal opinion, should be left up to the local community."

While Tanner's bill addresses two of the biggest issues in the drone debate, a Senate bill takes care of the third--economic development. 

"There [are] some tremendous opportunities for economic development," Senator Judson Hill, R - Marietta, told a Senate committee Wednesday.

Hill presented a bill to the Science and Technology committee that would create a Georgia Unmanned Aircraft Systems Commission.  The group would be tasked with learning about developments in the drone industry and how best to attract that industry to the state. 

"We wanted to create a central point to have that discussion and to really make Georgia the best place to manufacture, to invent new opportunities and technologies," Hill explained. 

The Science and Technology Committee will take up Hill's bill again on Monday.