4 ms·

The privacy point may be somewhat valid, although 2-story houses in an average U.S. suburb already easily put most yards in view of neighbors' upper story windo

The privacy point may be somewhat valid, although 2-story houses in an average U.S. suburb already easily put most yards in view of neighbors' upper story windows. And any drone specifically used to spy on neighbors will either be relatively close and thus fairly loud and noticeable, or have nice camera gear that would already enable a lot of spying even without a drone (e.g. in upper story windows, again). The safety issue doesn't strike me as compelling. I don't think drones introduce much physical danger beyond, say, playing baseball in the neighborhood. Obviously if the sky became very crowded with delivery drones, or crash landings became at all common, this would be an obvious reason for heavy regulation, but I don't see this posing much of a danger.

babesh 5y ago
I worry about falling drones. How far above ground did the drones fly? How fast were they flying? How heavy were they when you added payload? What material were the blades? Was there any protection or cushioning? Where do they intend to fly? Above streets or above homes or above sidewalks?
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Worrying makes sense. I worry the same for much, much larger delivery airplanes that probably pass overhead multiple times per day. But there's a difference between worrying and outright opposing.
- cma 5y ago
  Large commercial drones have parachutes.
  - pasttense01 5y ago
    I've been under the impression that it takes a considerable distance for parachutes to come into operation--while drones fly fairly close to the ground.
    - erik_seaberg 5y ago
      From what I’ve read, main parachutes are packed so that they open slowly, and BASE jumpers can design for a rough ride that starts below 200 feet. Maybe a drone could constantly drag an open chute because it’s not trying to get anywhere near terminal velocity?
imoverclocked 5y ago
> or crash landings became at all common Many things can cause a drone to crash. Motor failure (from gunk/over-use/loss of power/birds/bugs/...) to unseen obstructions (eg: branches/power lines) to user error. My bet is that like all things Amazon, there will be a race to make everything as cheap as possible which includes the labor watching over the operation of individual drones. This makes the perfect recipe for balancing crash statistics with money invested... which means crash landings will become common. At some point, the question will be, "Is it cheaper to maintain a fleet of cheaply constructed drones or just replace them through attrition?"
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I don't doubt that a delivery company would want to do things as cheaply as possible, but I also don't oppose regulations to prevent them from skimping on certain safety features. We do, for example, require Amazon delivery vehicles to follow all vehicle safety regulations (or, if there are cases where they're not enforced, they obviously ought to be). It might be reasonable to worry that delivery drones will suddenly take over cities before regulations can even be put in place (although that apparently hasn't happened yet). But it's not reasonable to assume that there's something unique about drones that will make them inherently more impervious to reasonable regulations and thus inherently much more dangerous than, say, existing delivery automobiles and airplanes. In fact, I would expect any remotely competent deployment of delivery drones would be much safer than the delivery automobiles they replace, simply due to the baseline accident rate of automobiles.
  - imoverclocked 5y ago
    > I also don't oppose regulations to prevent them from skimping on certain safety features. > I would expect any remotely competent deployment of delivery drones would be much safer than the delivery automobiles they replace, simply due to the baseline accident rate of automobiles. Why would you expect that a brand-new, mostly-unregulated technology would be safer than one that is over a century old with a lot of safety regulation in place? Even over the last several decades, safety regulation has reduced the per-mile as well as overall death rate of motor vehicles. [1] Regulation takes time and is often reactionary to large-scale problems. How do you expect to define a "remotely competent deployment of delivery drones" given the general lack of experience in doing so? Given the employee churn described in the article, do you think there is a culture of safety in this organization so deep that finding a fundamental+fatal flaw would be grounds for ceasing all drone-deliveries until the flaw is provably fixed? From the article: “There was a lot of decision making made in the moment without long term thought to it. It was almost slinging shit at the wall and hoping stuff would stick.” How can you justify better safety from something developed with constant engineering churn, short-term thinking and unreasonable time goals? [1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot#trends https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl...
lumost 5y ago
It's easier to understand typical politics concerns in the US through the lens of peoples dreams. A modest and common dream is to live in a place where you are free to do whatever you like in your yard without concern for neighbors e.g. A house in the woods/rural area. A simplification of that dream is to have fences in yard. If you remove a dream from possibility Americans will often react negatively even if the reality is that only a portion of them will achieve that dream in their lifetime.
- tapland 5y ago
  I think that's a pretty universal reaction in that case.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. - John Steinbeck
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
    Well, that and socialism sucks for the poor. But at least it also sucks for everyone else, too!
maxerickson 5y ago
50 pound drone seems inherently more dangerous than a baseball.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Especially with spinning scythes. It's interesting tech, but a nightmare for the liability lawyers.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Inherently? I'm not so sure. Of course if you're going to get hit in the head by one at full speed, you might choose the baseball (although not a great choice either way). But if you're choosing between a competently-operated delivery drone delivering a package to your house, or children playing baseball in your backyard, I'd probably guess that the drone is less likely to cause injury or property damage.
  - akomtu 5y ago
    Well, drop a 50 lbs dumbbell on your car from 2nd floor and see what happens. Now if that thing falls on someone's kid running in the neighborhood...
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      And then you probably don't need a whole lot of drone deliveries to outnumber the kids playing neighborhood baseball. Kids around here are barely playing catch in their yards.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      But when we say “inherently more dangerous” I assume we’re incorporating the likelihood of that actually happening. A dining room table dropping on a kid’s head would be very bad too, but we don’t generally think about tables as being “inherently dangerous.”
      - snovv_crash 5y ago
Talanes 5y ago
The neighbor's window is a fixed consideration: you mentally map out who can see into your yard once and you're done. The possibility of a drone requires that mental calculation to be played out on a constantly repeated basis.
prometheus76 5y ago
What about the danger of drones falling into streets, or dropping their payload into streets? Or windshields? Or onto people's heads? Think of gusts of wind. Think of a sudden rainstorm. Think of how rain changes the reflectivity of everything, making navigation much more difficult. Think of snow. Think of sprinklers. Think of a faulty battery dying. Think of batteries catching on fire midair, drone on fire dropping onto a home, or an apartment building. Think of the drone losing power midflight. The fact that they threw people at this means it was clearly a marketing tool, and not a serious engineering project.

babesh 5y ago

I worry about falling drones. How far above ground did the drones fly? How fast were they flying? How heavy were they when you added payload? What material were the blades? Was there any protection or cushioning? Where do they intend to fly? Above streets or above homes or above sidewalks?

tshaddox 5y ago
Worrying makes sense. I worry the same for much, much larger delivery airplanes that probably pass overhead multiple times per day. But there's a difference between worrying and outright opposing.
cma 5y ago
Large commercial drones have parachutes.
- pasttense01 5y ago
  I've been under the impression that it takes a considerable distance for parachutes to come into operation--while drones fly fairly close to the ground.
  - erik_seaberg 5y ago
    From what I’ve read, main parachutes are packed so that they open slowly, and BASE jumpers can design for a rough ride that starts below 200 feet. Maybe a drone could constantly drag an open chute because it’s not trying to get anywhere near terminal velocity?

imoverclocked 5y ago

> or crash landings became at all common Many things can cause a drone to crash. Motor failure (from gunk/over-use/loss of power/birds/bugs/...) to unseen obstructions (eg: branches/power lines) to user error. My bet is that like all things Amazon, there will be a race to make everything as cheap as possible which includes the labor watching over the operation of individual drones. This makes the perfect recipe for balancing crash statistics with money invested... which means crash landings will become common. At some point, the question will be, "Is it cheaper to maintain a fleet of cheaply constructed drones or just replace them through attrition?"

tshaddox 5y ago
I don't doubt that a delivery company would want to do things as cheaply as possible, but I also don't oppose regulations to prevent them from skimping on certain safety features. We do, for example, require Amazon delivery vehicles to follow all vehicle safety regulations (or, if there are cases where they're not enforced, they obviously ought to be). It might be reasonable to worry that delivery drones will suddenly take over cities before regulations can even be put in place (although that apparently hasn't happened yet). But it's not reasonable to assume that there's something unique about drones that will make them inherently more impervious to reasonable regulations and thus inherently much more dangerous than, say, existing delivery automobiles and airplanes. In fact, I would expect any remotely competent deployment of delivery drones would be much safer than the delivery automobiles they replace, simply due to the baseline accident rate of automobiles.
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  > I also don't oppose regulations to prevent them from skimping on certain safety features. > I would expect any remotely competent deployment of delivery drones would be much safer than the delivery automobiles they replace, simply due to the baseline accident rate of automobiles. Why would you expect that a brand-new, mostly-unregulated technology would be safer than one that is over a century old with a lot of safety regulation in place? Even over the last several decades, safety regulation has reduced the per-mile as well as overall death rate of motor vehicles. [1] Regulation takes time and is often reactionary to large-scale problems. How do you expect to define a "remotely competent deployment of delivery drones" given the general lack of experience in doing so? Given the employee churn described in the article, do you think there is a culture of safety in this organization so deep that finding a fundamental+fatal flaw would be grounds for ceasing all drone-deliveries until the flaw is provably fixed? From the article: “There was a lot of decision making made in the moment without long term thought to it. It was almost slinging shit at the wall and hoping stuff would stick.” How can you justify better safety from something developed with constant engineering churn, short-term thinking and unreasonable time goals? [1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearly-snapshot#trends https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl...

lumost 5y ago

It's easier to understand typical politics concerns in the US through the lens of peoples dreams. A modest and common dream is to live in a place where you are free to do whatever you like in your yard without concern for neighbors e.g. A house in the woods/rural area. A simplification of that dream is to have fences in yard. If you remove a dream from possibility Americans will often react negatively even if the reality is that only a portion of them will achieve that dream in their lifetime.

tapland 5y ago
I think that's a pretty universal reaction in that case.
brokenmachine 5y ago
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. - John Steinbeck
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
  Well, that and socialism sucks for the poor. But at least it also sucks for everyone else, too!

maxerickson 5y ago

50 pound drone seems inherently more dangerous than a baseball.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Especially with spinning scythes. It's interesting tech, but a nightmare for the liability lawyers.
tshaddox 5y ago
Inherently? I'm not so sure. Of course if you're going to get hit in the head by one at full speed, you might choose the baseball (although not a great choice either way). But if you're choosing between a competently-operated delivery drone delivering a package to your house, or children playing baseball in your backyard, I'd probably guess that the drone is less likely to cause injury or property damage.
- akomtu 5y ago
  Well, drop a 50 lbs dumbbell on your car from 2nd floor and see what happens. Now if that thing falls on someone's kid running in the neighborhood...
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    And then you probably don't need a whole lot of drone deliveries to outnumber the kids playing neighborhood baseball. Kids around here are barely playing catch in their yards.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    But when we say “inherently more dangerous” I assume we’re incorporating the likelihood of that actually happening. A dining room table dropping on a kid’s head would be very bad too, but we don’t generally think about tables as being “inherently dangerous.”
    - snovv_crash 5y ago

Talanes 5y ago

The neighbor's window is a fixed consideration: you mentally map out who can see into your yard once and you're done. The possibility of a drone requires that mental calculation to be played out on a constantly repeated basis.

prometheus76 5y ago

What about the danger of drones falling into streets, or dropping their payload into streets? Or windshields? Or onto people's heads? Think of gusts of wind. Think of a sudden rainstorm. Think of how rain changes the reflectivity of everything, making navigation much more difficult. Think of snow. Think of sprinklers. Think of a faulty battery dying. Think of batteries catching on fire midair, drone on fire dropping onto a home, or an apartment building. Think of the drone losing power midflight. The fact that they threw people at this means it was clearly a marketing tool, and not a serious engineering project.