6 ms·
Fine and dandy when flying over a desert but when the drone meets the city and an "autopilot" failure occurs over a freeway/highway/street or someone's head the
by SCAQTony 8y ago
Fine and dandy when flying over a desert but when the drone meets the city and an "autopilot" failure occurs over a freeway/highway/street or someone's head the consequences will be unforgivable.
- arvind3199 8y agoSimple solution - mandate that drones are implemented with a parachute system, it's already being done on prop planes (cirrus)
- gaius 8y agoA 20lb weight can kill a person from a far lower altitude than a parachute could meaningfully slow its descent. Parachutes aren’t magic.
- snovv_crash 8y agoHelicopters also have this "death zone" where an engine failure would not allow them to autorotate and have a controlled landing. And helicopters are a lot bigger and heavier.
- JetSpiegel 8y agoMosr cities don't have thousands of helicopters zipping by autonomously above our heads.
- mistermann 8y agoI wonder if an issue could be detected in most cases and the drone could immediately seek a safe landing, say on a building rooftop.
- sumoboy 8y agoProgram a better flight path to avoid people. How is it refueled after landing hundreds of miles away?
- SimbaOnSteroids 8y agoDepending on what its hauling it may be disposable.
- candiodari 8y agoI don't get that. Before the sun rises tomorrow, for the US alone, 32 Americans will make a mistake with their car that kills someone (potentially, but unlikely, themselves, 2 will kill themselves, 29 will kill someone else, one will kill 2 others, for a total of 33 deaths). At the same time, a further 2000 Americans will injure someone with a car, and another 3000 will cause severe (I believe > 1000$) property damage, mostly on cars. That's on 260 million cars, or an accident rate of something like 1.3% on a yearly basis (unfortunately, this masks the fact that ~70% of those accidents are done by < 10% of drivers. So plenty of people are, frankly, just plain insane and have double digit accident rates). That, we find perfectly acceptable. Drivers that crash cars about once a year are not that rare. And it's not like these people are the ones having minor accidents. Maybe it's just me but ... weird how people's sense of risks work.
- finches 8y agoNo, nobody finds that acceptable. Until you stop misrepresenting the people on the supposed "other end" of your "discussion," no one is going to engage you in a real discussion about it, which is (unfortunately) probably why you still continue to think and act this way.
- mcny 8y agoI know lots of people who make rants about bad drivers but a. Fail to signal when Turing left into traffic b. Talk on the phone while driving c. Drive home from a bar "because it isn't like I'm black out drunk" A lot of people find risks acceptable if it is them causing it.
- davnicwil 8y agoIt's simply that that's not a new risk. Everyone has grown up with knowledge of that risk and accepted it as a given, therefore it is not alarming. I think this is necessary because to constantly evalute and fear ever-present risk would be debilitating. New risks however are alarming, and do trigger the fearful 'better not try that in case the worst happens' response in a lot (the majority?) of people - this probably makes sense as a survival mechanism.