There’s a push to crack down on people who shine laser pointers at aircrafts.   A surge in reported incidents this year has troubled many in the aviation industry, and some lawmakers are hoping to get laws in place to stop the dangerous trend. Right now, it’s a federal crime to interfere with an aircraft, but government attorneys say it has been hard to prosecute people the way the law is written.

A bill to standardize and stiffen penalties against those who point lasers at planes has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives, and is currently under consideration in the U.S. Senate.  Introduced by California Republican Congressman Dan Lungren, the “Securing Aircraft Cockpits Against Lasers Act of 2010” would impose federal fines and/or a prison term of up to five years for those convicted. Lungren insists we shouldn’t have to wait until there’s a loss of life to put better laws on the books.

From January to August of this year, there have been 1,700 reports of these types of incidents according to the FBI, which is up from 1,000 reported in 2008.  Pilots say, they don’t have to be directly hit with the light for a major distraction to take place in the cockpit.  Robert Mark, a commercial pilot and CEO of Jetwhine.com, tells Fox News, “The normal reaction for a human is that when something shines in your eyes, you tend to look over there.  You get distracted and that makes it even worse.  One, because you’re not really paying attention to what you’re doing in terms of flying which again at low altitude can be really dangerous.  But also as soon as you look in that general area, you open up the possibility that the laser can damage your eye. ”

While the act is illegal, actually catching an offender is extremely difficult.  In many cases, by the time a pilot reports the light, the person who pointed the laser is long gone.  In one recent Rhode Island case, a man was standing on the shoreline, and pointed his laser at an airplane arriving from Newark airport.  Police were able to catch him, because he had also flashed the light at a boat captain who was out on the water.   The captain called the Warwick Police Department, which had a patrol unit nearby. Officers quickly found the laser pointing suspect and took him in to custody and called federal authorities.

Pilots blame the increase in incidents on cheaper and stronger lasers making their way into people’s hands, and ask that you think about your surroundings before pointing your beams up.