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This is a fanboy answer: "Planes ARE the safest way to travel: maybe drones are the safest in certain conditions" Western airliners are very safe, but the USA

This is a fanboy answer: "Planes ARE the safest way to travel: maybe drones are the safest in certain conditions" Western airliners are very safe, but the USA averages one GA accident per day: https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=21274 https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=2... Helicopters have much worse failure modes, even in multi-million dollar aircraft. Small drones are the worst of all, and should not be flown over populated areas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_nut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_nut The FAA historically has regulated that aircraft fly 500' and above over non sparsely-populated areas for a reason. Or you lose your license. Drone deliveries fundamentally violate that, as regardless of where your warehouse is located, you're deliberately flying towards a populated area (ie. customers.) The above is why the FAA has justly been slow on allowing drones into the airspace, and why you have to register them. A constructive comment I can add is that I can only see delivery drones being safe with a built-in fixed wing that allows it to glide to the ground power-off below 10 mph. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

weddpros 7y ago
347 lives lost per year, or one per million people. Similar to Prion disease fatalities. Sure, that's 3 times more than lightening strikes... but that's still extremely low AND safer than whatever. As for the risk of a plane over a populated area, I think it's safe to say that a 4kg drone is a much lesser threat than a Cessna weighing 200 times more, and that's a very small plane. So it's really not fair to compare a drone crash and a plane crash (we're not talking military drones here, I hope you've read the article). "...I can only see delivery drones being safe with a built-in fixed wing that allows it to glide to the ground power-off below 10 mph": and it seems many people disagree but feel free to prove them wrong and show the world how you can glide a drone to the ground in a dense city to deliver blood at a hospital.
FDSGSG 7y ago
GA is very safe too, there are just lots of very unsafe GA pilots.

weddpros 7y ago

347 lives lost per year, or one per million people. Similar to Prion disease fatalities. Sure, that's 3 times more than lightening strikes... but that's still extremely low AND safer than whatever. As for the risk of a plane over a populated area, I think it's safe to say that a 4kg drone is a much lesser threat than a Cessna weighing 200 times more, and that's a very small plane. So it's really not fair to compare a drone crash and a plane crash (we're not talking military drones here, I hope you've read the article). "...I can only see delivery drones being safe with a built-in fixed wing that allows it to glide to the ground power-off below 10 mph": and it seems many people disagree but feel free to prove them wrong and show the world how you can glide a drone to the ground in a dense city to deliver blood at a hospital.

FDSGSG 7y ago

GA is very safe too, there are just lots of very unsafe GA pilots.