How should drones be regulated?

It’s a classic case of why governments end up regulating things. Drones are everywhere. They’re cheap, they’re a lot of fun, they let you play peek-a-boo from the sky and they’re generally unrestricted. What could go wrong? Well…

Well…

“Every day the FAA says there are an average of two reported incidents involving unmanned aircraft and manned aircraft,” CBS correspondent Jeff Pegues recently reported.

There is no destination more tempting for drones than the Golden Gate Bridge. Denis Mulligan, general manager of the bridge, says he sees drone flying over it, under it, and even through it.

“Unlicensed inexperienced people are flying them in busy places where they have no business flying,” Mulligan said.

And in one case, crashing onto the roadway. Mulligan says it‘s time for a Federal “Drone Safety Act.”

“We really have no regulatory framework to say, ‘You can’t do that,” he said. “And so, it’s kind of like the Wild West right now.”

There are some rules, although it’s pretty much on the honor system. Hobbyists are supposed to stay below 400 feet and at least 5 miles away from an airport.

But the Internet is full of reports, including a number of incidents of a drones reaching 9,000 feet, in the same airspace as commercial jets.

Of course any crackdown on the bad guys ends up hurting the responsible operators as well &#8212 like Justin Kuzmanich, who uses drones to make videos of homes for sale.

“An outright ban, I don’t think is the solution,” Kuzmanich told CBS’s John Blackstone. “When a technology is new, sometimes it’s good to let the reigns out a little bit, within reason.”

Except for those guys running up and down the beach taking bikini pictures. That’s one of the more dangerous ways to use a drone.