Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
Last week, California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have banned drone flights over private property.
For companies like Amazon and Google, this is a major win because both businesses are working toward overall faster product deliveries, and hope to use drones to deliver small packages. The interest in drones is part of ongoing efforts to provide more and faster delivery options to consumers.
Other new delivery programs include Google’s same-day delivery, which the company is piloting with local stores, including home improvement businesses such as Gordon’s Ace Hardware in Chicago.
The drone bill would have exposed users “to burdensome litigation and new causes of action,” Brown says in an article from The Wall Street Journal.
Additionally, the bill would have made flying a drone lower than 350 feet above private property without permission considered criminal trespassing, the article adds.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed rules for commercial drones, making them restricted to flights below 500 feet. If the bill had passed, commercial drone users would have been limited to a 150-foot area of airspace and would require companies to get permission from dozens of landowners for some flights, according to the article.
The FAA has approved more than 1,500 users to fly commercial drones in the U.S., and is expected to finalize national rules next year that regulate commercial drone flights.
