Skies Aren't Clogged With Drones, but Don't Rule Them Out Yet

If you've been worrying that drones would be filling the skies over your head, dropping packages off day after day at your neighbor's house, leaving food on doorsteps or photographing your every move, you can relax a little. At least for now.

The hype over commercial drones is, so far, largely just that. One of the people who contributed to that hype was Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder. In a "60 Minutes" interview in December 2013, he predicted that deliveries by drones could become commonplace within five years.

The fifth anniversary of Mr. Bezos's prediction has come and gone, but widespread deliveries by drone are not yet a reality, neither by Amazon nor by any other company.

Regulatory thickets, technical complexity and the public's skittishness have proven to be formidable hurdles. At a minimum, the unresolved issues include whether it is safe to allow drones to fly beyond a pilot's visual line of sight, to operate at night and to fly over people.

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