Imagine This: Drones could fly over medians of surface streets so if they do fall the only thing they are likely to hit is a car or a very, very unlucky pedestr

Imagine This: Drones could fly over medians of surface streets so if they do fall the only thing they are likely to hit is a car or a very, very unlucky pedestrian with some additional hardware and a connection to ATC (Think ADS-B 2.0) you would not need to worry about hitting other aircraft. And instead of landing at 1000 unknown landing points have them shuttle packages between a few known landing points. I.E go down to the corner Walgreens drone landing zone (rooftops or parking lots employees get the package from the drone drop it in a drop box for you to pick up and swap batteries for the next flight) Then you just head down to pick up whatever was just flown 10 miles to your area for you instead of fighting rush hour traffic, thus removing a car from said traffic and making the world a better place. The last mile becomes the last 100 yards. The point is there are solvable problems that can make drones viable. I've done a great many long distance autonomous drone flights (we're talking miles) to then have it land within 3ft of where it was supposed to. The tech is very close to being up to the task (3-5 years) the regulation however is not. Food for thought Cars kill 40k people per year in the US, even if a few are killed by drones the number of deaths avoided by having less car trips would likely well more then offset those killed by falling drones. One more thing, if cars were invented today they would most likely be made illegal due to the potential for death (40k/year). Aside from a handful of freak accidents drones don't kill people yet there are a great many people trying to ban them out the the fear that they might. Now compare that to the 40k number for cars.