In an attempt to prevent rogue drones from further interfering with air traffic, feds are setting up the last details for drone registration rules.
Federal regulators announced Monday that they enabled a task force designed to supervise the team working on a federal drone registry.
New rules that require recreational-drone owners to register their aircrafts are expected to be enforced by the end of the year. So, if you plan to buy a drone for Christmas save some extra cash for registration.
The new policy would be drafted by Obama administration and the Federal Aviation Administration experts. But regulators said that they still need to make the final adjustments for the registration process, which they hope to be official in two months.
It is one of those rare occasions that federal regulators rush to issue new legislation. Experts believe that a surge in sales made regulators to speed things up.
“The signal we’re sending today is that when you’re in the national airspace, it’s a very serious matter,”
The United States Secretary of Transportation Anthony Renard Foxx told journalists.
So far, pilots of major airliners report more than 100 close encounters with the unmanned aerial vehicles every month. In 2014, such reports were nearly nonexistent.
But as drones became more popular, their numbers skyrocketed and so did unwanted close calls. Analysts expect 700,000 recreational drones to be sold by the end of the year, which is an increase of more than 60 percent from last year.
The FAA rules doesn’t allow drone users to fly the crafts above 400 feet or get closer to an airport more than five miles. But hobbyists sometimes break these rules and authorities are powerless to charge them.
But registering drones may solve just one part of the problem. In order to learn who the owner of a rogue drone is, authorities will need to catch the drone and learn its registration number. Most unmanned crafts are too small to be detected by radars and do not carry a system that beams back their location.
Yet, feds are setting up the last details for drone registration rules because they hope that a registration requirement would make drone owners more responsible when flying their devices.
According to authorities, people who plan to use a drone would need to register it online and confirm that they know the federal rules related to the robotic aircrafts. Foxx noticed that people find it hard to comply with the rules if they do not know what those rules are.
Image Source: Geograph
