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They didn't address the other part of safety -- some percentage of those hundreds (or thousands) of 15+ kg drones flying over a city are going to have an unavo

They didn't address the other part of safety -- some percentage of those hundreds (or thousands) of 15+ kg drones flying over a city are going to have an unavoidable collision or a catastrophic hardware failure and come crashing down to the ground, which could easily be deadly if it lands on someone, or cause a car accident if it lands on a car or on the road. At the very least it's going to cause property damage - who do I call when one punches a hole through my roof or I see one hanging in my tree? Has anyone done an analysis of the crash rate for large drones and likely casualty rate on the ground?

sandworm101 11y ago
Well, you could always take anything onboard the drone as salvage. Or what about all those people who will not want to let the drone retrieval squads onto their land? I'm waiting for the ability to transmit "bird alerts" to chase away the drones I don't like.
function_seven 11y ago
You're right that they need to address those concerns. I'd like to see that analysis also include any possible reduced injury/death from fewer delivery truck miles and fewer consumer car trips to the local store. I have no idea if it will offset or not, but I could see—even with a few thousand drones crashing every year—that a net benefit could still be realized because people are not driving to the store for some of their shopping.
- Johnny555 11y ago
  Sure, using drones instead of trucks could be a net win in safety if it means less drivers on the road, but this seems unlikely -- one driver in a UPS truck can deliver hundreds of packages on his route, but since the drone has such limited payload capacity, it might need to make a round trip per package so it would take hundreds of drone trips to replace one driver with a truck. And, since heavy packages aren't realistic for a drone, the truck is still going to drive much of his delivery route to deliver the heavy packages.
  - function_seven 11y ago
    I should have left UPS out of my comment. You're right about that. But if drones are replacing car trips to the store, then there's a good opportunity there to offset automobile fatalities
    - msandford 11y ago
      I think setting up a regular UPS truck with a couple of drones that land on the roof to pick up small packages and deliver them is pretty compelling. In Houston there are only a couple of logistic centers for UPS and FedEx and whatnot. You wouldn't have a drone fly 40 (or maybe 100) miles round-trip to deliver a package all the way across town. But if every regular delivery truck has 2x or 3x drones on top they can make small package deliveries without the driver stopping on his route as he/she delivers the bigger packages. The ones too heavy for a drone to lift. The drones could make deliveries during the driver's lunch break which is a nice bonus. An hour with the truck parked in the same spot. You could also have drone-specific semis that go on a very slow rotation around the city, moving a few miles quickly and then stopping so the drones can make deliveries from a "home base". Drones are a good last mile solution but will never replace the back haul network. Wheel on pavement has incredible efficiency versus rotor through air.
  - integraton 11y ago
    > the truck is still going to drive much of his delivery route to deliver the heavy packages How this will exist in the future in practice is pure speculation at this time. There are many different factors (autonomous vehicles, smarter routing techniques, routing changes as the burden is shifted to non-truck delivery systems, and increased demand for small package delivery as more shopping is done online, for example) that could dramatically reshape the delivery landscape. Furthermore, heavy packages delivered to consumers in the US, like those containing appliances and furniture, are already routinely delivered by in-house or smaller delivery services rather than UPS, FedEx, or US Mail.
  - unprepare 11y ago
    What if a drone costs 100x less than a delivery driver? You can have 100 drones out delivery packages for the same cost of one delivery driver delivering one package at a time. It would be interesting to see data on what % of amazon purchases are above the payload of a drone - i imagine they crunched the numbers themselves and determined it was low enough to justify continuing to push this issue (even after the FAA tried to ban[1] drone deliveries altogether) Theyll look at $/package and time/package for drones and delivery drivers. I imagine once you account for driver salary and benefits, cost of vehicles, cost of fuel and maintenance, cost of insurance for drivers and vehicles, cost of management structure to maintain drivers, schedules, routes, etc - the $/package for drones likely make up for any disadvantage they currently have in time/package Also, drones can deliver packages 24/7/365, no reason you cant wake up to a package delivered overnight (maybe even your morning kindle (tm) e-ink newspaper) [1]http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-drones-to-deliver-packages/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-drones-...
- sandworm101 11y ago
  UPS-type drivers are very safe. There are lots of trucks, resulting in many accidents nationwide, but they are far safer than the average driver. (Remember that many/most road deaths occur at night and have some relationship to alcohol.) So taking some of them off the road won't contribute much compared to the slight but undeniable risk of a drone-aircraft collision killing many.
  - function_seven 11y ago
    Yeah, they have tremendous safety records. I should have focused on the other "opportunity cost" of fewer deaths dues to fewer car trips made by consumers. Also, we have no idea what the drone-aircraft collision risk is. That seems like something that could be easily solved by strict control over who flies where in the sky. I'd guess that more people will die from these things falling on their head.
  - BurningFrog 11y ago
    They sure block traffic a lot though.
Phlarp 11y ago
Drones can be engineered to be far more resilient to failure than what we are currently seeing today. The DJI Phantom for example only has 4 rotors and a single battery, so any one failure of a component in the power train or controller will likely bring down the entire device. The type of drone Amazon is likely to deploy widely in this scenario would of course be much larger, but would also have many more rotors, think of a copter with 8 arms and 2 motors per arm, with the power trains wired up as 4 independent systems each with 4 opposing rotors and it's own battery capable of keeping the device flying independently. Flight controllers can also be built hilariously cheap, so having 3 or 5 in a voting configuration is equally simple. Now you have a machine that can stay airborne and under control with over half of the rotors disabled.
- Johnny555 11y ago
  Sure, engineering can reduce the risk, but even passenger aircraft sometimes suffer catastrophic failures and drones will likely be under much less scrutiny than passenger aircraft - $10,000 metal fatigue scanning may make sense on a $3M aircraft, but on a $10,000 drone? what will happen to your 8 armed aircraft if the batteries burst into flames, metal fatigue in the central hub makes 3 of the arms on one side fall off, or a rogue drone runs into it? When drones are making millions of flights a year, even a one in a million malfunction is likely to occur many times a year.
  - kenrikm 11y ago
    Cars kill ~38,000 people per year just in the US. Considering the number of cars on the road would go down (used for deliveries or trips to the store) The number of lives saved would most likely counteract any lost to the 1 in a million chance of a drone falling and killing you. Zero risk is not going to happen but given enough care is provided and sane regulations are in place drones should have a net positive impact on the number of people killed each year. It's a shame we have become so risk adverse as there are plenty of things way more likely to kill you then drones.
    - Johnny555 11y ago
blackbagboys 11y ago
Surely this would be handled no differently than if your car was rear-ended by a UPS delivery truck.
- Johnny555 11y ago
  So just like my car insurance, I'll have to purchase "uninsured drone operator" insurance to cover my house when a uninsured or unidentifiable drone drops on my house?
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    You probably already purchase insurance on your house...
    - Johnny555 11y ago
      Every homeowner knows that you don't make a claim against your homeowners insurance unless you can't avoid it: http://www.houselogic.com/home-advice/home-insurance/homeowners-insurance-to-claim-or-not-to-claim/ http://www.houselogic.com/home-advice/home-insurance/homeown... "... either a major claim or too many claims in a given period, no matter how legitimate, could lead to losing your house’s coverage altogether..."
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        An uninsured aircraft falling on the roof would surely be a valid claim. And anyway companies like Amazon would surely be required to have their own insurance.
        Johnny555 11y ago
        Read the link I posted -- if you make multiple claims (even if they are all perfectly valid claims and not your fault), your homeowners insurance rates can raise, or you can even be blocked from coverage from multiple insurance companies through the industry wide C.L.U.E. claim reporting system. Sure, if it's a known drone from a large company, I'm sure they will have insurance, but what do you do when you have a $5000 hole in your roof and Amazon claims that the "Amazon" drone that you found is not theirs - someone slapped an Amazon label on their own drone to get away from the insurance requirements.
intrasight 11y ago
I would expect there to be a requirement for an independent parachute system on such drones - independent power, sensing, etc. If it senses that it's falling, it deploys the chute. That module would have to be FAA certified.
hannob 11y ago
This is of course a legit concern, but what should be remembered is that it has to be balanced not against zero risk, but against the risko of the alternative. Today delivery of goods mostly happen in cars. Cars have an awful lot of accidents and other negative external effects. This is of course all guess-work as long as we don't have real world data from mass drone flights, but I'd assume that drones may come out favorably in terms of accident damage.
- SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
  > but I'd assume that drones may come out favorably in terms of accident damage I'm not sure that we should assume that. Anything that is 100-400 feet off the ground is inherently more dangerous than an equivalent object resting on the ground, simply because of what happens when it fails and gravity takes over. We can compare automated flying drones to manually-operated cars. We could also compare automated flying drones to automated cars. The drones scenario might end up safer than now. But I would not assume it.
analog31 11y ago
I'm sure the insurance companies will have to figure out those things pretty quickly in order to set appropriate rates.
giaour 11y ago
There are millions of cars on the road, but you know who to sue if one crashes into the front of your house. License plates and liability insurance would be sensible requirements for drones, too.

sandworm101 11y ago

Well, you could always take anything onboard the drone as salvage. Or what about all those people who will not want to let the drone retrieval squads onto their land? I'm waiting for the ability to transmit "bird alerts" to chase away the drones I don't like.

function_seven 11y ago

You're right that they need to address those concerns. I'd like to see that analysis also include any possible reduced injury/death from fewer delivery truck miles and fewer consumer car trips to the local store. I have no idea if it will offset or not, but I could see—even with a few thousand drones crashing every year—that a net benefit could still be realized because people are not driving to the store for some of their shopping.

Johnny555 11y ago
Sure, using drones instead of trucks could be a net win in safety if it means less drivers on the road, but this seems unlikely -- one driver in a UPS truck can deliver hundreds of packages on his route, but since the drone has such limited payload capacity, it might need to make a round trip per package so it would take hundreds of drone trips to replace one driver with a truck. And, since heavy packages aren't realistic for a drone, the truck is still going to drive much of his delivery route to deliver the heavy packages.
- function_seven 11y ago
  I should have left UPS out of my comment. You're right about that. But if drones are replacing car trips to the store, then there's a good opportunity there to offset automobile fatalities
  - msandford 11y ago
    I think setting up a regular UPS truck with a couple of drones that land on the roof to pick up small packages and deliver them is pretty compelling. In Houston there are only a couple of logistic centers for UPS and FedEx and whatnot. You wouldn't have a drone fly 40 (or maybe 100) miles round-trip to deliver a package all the way across town. But if every regular delivery truck has 2x or 3x drones on top they can make small package deliveries without the driver stopping on his route as he/she delivers the bigger packages. The ones too heavy for a drone to lift. The drones could make deliveries during the driver's lunch break which is a nice bonus. An hour with the truck parked in the same spot. You could also have drone-specific semis that go on a very slow rotation around the city, moving a few miles quickly and then stopping so the drones can make deliveries from a "home base". Drones are a good last mile solution but will never replace the back haul network. Wheel on pavement has incredible efficiency versus rotor through air.
- integraton 11y ago
  > the truck is still going to drive much of his delivery route to deliver the heavy packages How this will exist in the future in practice is pure speculation at this time. There are many different factors (autonomous vehicles, smarter routing techniques, routing changes as the burden is shifted to non-truck delivery systems, and increased demand for small package delivery as more shopping is done online, for example) that could dramatically reshape the delivery landscape. Furthermore, heavy packages delivered to consumers in the US, like those containing appliances and furniture, are already routinely delivered by in-house or smaller delivery services rather than UPS, FedEx, or US Mail.
- unprepare 11y ago
  What if a drone costs 100x less than a delivery driver? You can have 100 drones out delivery packages for the same cost of one delivery driver delivering one package at a time. It would be interesting to see data on what % of amazon purchases are above the payload of a drone - i imagine they crunched the numbers themselves and determined it was low enough to justify continuing to push this issue (even after the FAA tried to ban[1] drone deliveries altogether) Theyll look at $/package and time/package for drones and delivery drivers. I imagine once you account for driver salary and benefits, cost of vehicles, cost of fuel and maintenance, cost of insurance for drivers and vehicles, cost of management structure to maintain drivers, schedules, routes, etc - the $/package for drones likely make up for any disadvantage they currently have in time/package Also, drones can deliver packages 24/7/365, no reason you cant wake up to a package delivered overnight (maybe even your morning kindle (tm) e-ink newspaper) [1]http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-drones-to-deliver-packages/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-drones-...
sandworm101 11y ago
UPS-type drivers are very safe. There are lots of trucks, resulting in many accidents nationwide, but they are far safer than the average driver. (Remember that many/most road deaths occur at night and have some relationship to alcohol.) So taking some of them off the road won't contribute much compared to the slight but undeniable risk of a drone-aircraft collision killing many.
- function_seven 11y ago
  Yeah, they have tremendous safety records. I should have focused on the other "opportunity cost" of fewer deaths dues to fewer car trips made by consumers. Also, we have no idea what the drone-aircraft collision risk is. That seems like something that could be easily solved by strict control over who flies where in the sky. I'd guess that more people will die from these things falling on their head.
- BurningFrog 11y ago
  They sure block traffic a lot though.

Phlarp 11y ago

Drones can be engineered to be far more resilient to failure than what we are currently seeing today. The DJI Phantom for example only has 4 rotors and a single battery, so any one failure of a component in the power train or controller will likely bring down the entire device. The type of drone Amazon is likely to deploy widely in this scenario would of course be much larger, but would also have many more rotors, think of a copter with 8 arms and 2 motors per arm, with the power trains wired up as 4 independent systems each with 4 opposing rotors and it's own battery capable of keeping the device flying independently. Flight controllers can also be built hilariously cheap, so having 3 or 5 in a voting configuration is equally simple. Now you have a machine that can stay airborne and under control with over half of the rotors disabled.

Johnny555 11y ago
Sure, engineering can reduce the risk, but even passenger aircraft sometimes suffer catastrophic failures and drones will likely be under much less scrutiny than passenger aircraft - $10,000 metal fatigue scanning may make sense on a $3M aircraft, but on a $10,000 drone? what will happen to your 8 armed aircraft if the batteries burst into flames, metal fatigue in the central hub makes 3 of the arms on one side fall off, or a rogue drone runs into it? When drones are making millions of flights a year, even a one in a million malfunction is likely to occur many times a year.
- kenrikm 11y ago
  Cars kill ~38,000 people per year just in the US. Considering the number of cars on the road would go down (used for deliveries or trips to the store) The number of lives saved would most likely counteract any lost to the 1 in a million chance of a drone falling and killing you. Zero risk is not going to happen but given enough care is provided and sane regulations are in place drones should have a net positive impact on the number of people killed each year. It's a shame we have become so risk adverse as there are plenty of things way more likely to kill you then drones.
  - Johnny555 11y ago

blackbagboys 11y ago

Surely this would be handled no differently than if your car was rear-ended by a UPS delivery truck.

Johnny555 11y ago
So just like my car insurance, I'll have to purchase "uninsured drone operator" insurance to cover my house when a uninsured or unidentifiable drone drops on my house?
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  You probably already purchase insurance on your house...
  - Johnny555 11y ago
    Every homeowner knows that you don't make a claim against your homeowners insurance unless you can't avoid it: http://www.houselogic.com/home-advice/home-insurance/homeowners-insurance-to-claim-or-not-to-claim/ http://www.houselogic.com/home-advice/home-insurance/homeown... "... either a major claim or too many claims in a given period, no matter how legitimate, could lead to losing your house’s coverage altogether..."
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      An uninsured aircraft falling on the roof would surely be a valid claim. And anyway companies like Amazon would surely be required to have their own insurance.
      - Johnny555 11y ago
        Read the link I posted -- if you make multiple claims (even if they are all perfectly valid claims and not your fault), your homeowners insurance rates can raise, or you can even be blocked from coverage from multiple insurance companies through the industry wide C.L.U.E. claim reporting system. Sure, if it's a known drone from a large company, I'm sure they will have insurance, but what do you do when you have a $5000 hole in your roof and Amazon claims that the "Amazon" drone that you found is not theirs - someone slapped an Amazon label on their own drone to get away from the insurance requirements.

intrasight 11y ago

I would expect there to be a requirement for an independent parachute system on such drones - independent power, sensing, etc. If it senses that it's falling, it deploys the chute. That module would have to be FAA certified.

hannob 11y ago

This is of course a legit concern, but what should be remembered is that it has to be balanced not against zero risk, but against the risko of the alternative. Today delivery of goods mostly happen in cars. Cars have an awful lot of accidents and other negative external effects. This is of course all guess-work as long as we don't have real world data from mass drone flights, but I'd assume that drones may come out favorably in terms of accident damage.

SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
> but I'd assume that drones may come out favorably in terms of accident damage I'm not sure that we should assume that. Anything that is 100-400 feet off the ground is inherently more dangerous than an equivalent object resting on the ground, simply because of what happens when it fails and gravity takes over. We can compare automated flying drones to manually-operated cars. We could also compare automated flying drones to automated cars. The drones scenario might end up safer than now. But I would not assume it.

analog31 11y ago

I'm sure the insurance companies will have to figure out those things pretty quickly in order to set appropriate rates.

giaour 11y ago

There are millions of cars on the road, but you know who to sue if one crashes into the front of your house. License plates and liability insurance would be sensible requirements for drones, too.