Following two recent controversies over drone usage in Seattle, city officials are reportedly calling for stricter regulations.
According to a report from KING 5 News, city council members – as well as Seattle citizens – are looking into passing legislation that would encourage the FAA to set more rules for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) usage.
Bruce Harrell, a council member for the City of Seattle, told KING 5 that he is not “anti-drone” but that he believes the vehicles “raise a lot of health and safety concerns.”
Privacy, however, is his top priority, he said. In June, a Seattle woman spotted a UAV hovering outside her 26th-floor apartment window. When numerous media reports of the incident surfaced, the operator came forward and told police that his company, Skyris Imaging, was simply getting skyline photographs and in no way was peeping inside the building.
More recently, security personnel at the city’s Space Needle contacted police after witnesses said they spotted a small UAV fly around and crash into the top of the landmark. Subsequent police reports indicated that there was actually no collision, but the story erupted nationally and was even mentioned on a segment on the NBC Nightly News.
Read the full KING 5 report here.
