There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property -- maybe some kind of "no trespassing" beacon that acts a machine readable "no trespassing" sign? -- and recourse to deal with unwelcome drones.
I was watching a YouTube bodycam video showing police interaction with a guy who got upset that a Walmart delivery drone test was being performed on his property without permission. He shot the drone with a shotgun. I forget if he was arrested on the spot, but I think he got in huge legal trouble -- apparently in the US, shooting at a drone is treated the same as shooting at a manned aircraft, and he might have ended up getting multiple years in prison.
Shooting a human trespasser has a pretty high legal bar, and rightfully so. Shooting a robotic trespasser seems like it shouldn't carry prison time, even if unjustified it should only carry financial penalties. Especially if the law doesn't specify any peaceful recourse to get rid of unwanted robots trespassing on your property.
Worth noting this happened in a controlled service rollout with low flight volumes, and no one was injured. Investigating a rare failure after launch is exactly how aviation systems mature. You don’t get to zero incidents without operating in the real world. Grounding the program every time a prototype misbehaves would guarantee they never ship anything.
(jk, I don't actually work for Amazon's PR team. Just sarcastically beating them to the HN comment section)
Sustained winds in Dallas on Wednesday, Feb 4, were around 10–15 mph, with occasional gusts approaching ~30 mph. I wonder how well delivery drone station keeping works when the wind suddenly gusts by 20 mph.
This is the latest in a string of accidents with these drones crashing into things. Not good.
The earlier ones hit a crane which one could argue was an edge case as a temporary structure. This just hit a building which suggests something much more fundamentally wrong with the tech.
I wonder what the acceptable collisions/delivery needs to be for it to match last mile truck safety level (ie UPS trucks are big and run into things with non-zero frequency)
I'm sure there's a surprisingly high frequency of "acceptable" collisions if the bar is matching truck-inflicted property damage and injuries. Much like with replacing human drivers with computers, though, merely matching the cost and harms of the existing system is far from enough. Entrenched systems benefit from familiarity with the associated costs and risks, and from any structures built to mitigate them. New solutions have to be much better to gain acceptance.
Fortunately, automated systems can meet that higher threshold so long as we actually aim for it. If you aim for the lower "beats existing systems by some measures" bar then you make stupid decisions and tradeoffs like rushing to market or leaving out more capable sensors. We ought to try to make new technologies as good as possible. Sometimes the market will bet against that, but that's a tide that engineers should fight back against. Trucks kill too many people, and if drones kill half as many that's still unacceptable. We can do better.
> merely matching the cost and harms of the existing system is far from enough
The new system needs to be better but that doesn’t necessarily mean safer.
For delivery, that could mean cheaper and faster and more convenient.
Autonomous vehicles are a special case because those accidents tend to cause death and serious injury. As long as delivery drones can avoid killing multiple people per year, they are probably fine to compete on other metrics.
People are more accepting when there's a person who can be punished. There's also the fact that society generally expects cars/trucks hitting things. A drone impact might be a more minor impact, but it's possible for it to hit things that are more shocking to the public if they get hit.
>The earlier ones hit a crane which one could argue was an edge case as a temporary structure.
I would expect them not to fly into any kind of structure. That they'd hit a crane is pretty insane considering what the results of something like that could be.
Zero? I think the expected number of collisions can be larger than zero. Jimmy Johns sandwich delivery by bicycle has resulted in more collisions than zero and that is arguably safe.
They weigh 80-85lbs and travel at speeds of around 50mph.
The impact would be quite serious, if they crash at speed but even falling on a car or a human would be quite serious, possibly deadly, even if the propellers don't spin.
> The Federal Aviation Administration opened an investigation into Amazon’s drone delivery program in November after one of its drone struck an Internet cable line in Waco.
Looks like the rest of that sentence has been cut off: "... but the company doesn't expect to be punished, since it spent $75 million dollars bribing President Trump in the form of the Melania movie.".
There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property -- maybe some kind of "no trespassing" beacon that acts a machine readable "no trespassing" sign? -- and recourse to deal with unwelcome drones.
I was watching a YouTube bodycam video showing police interaction with a guy who got upset that a Walmart delivery drone test was being performed on his property without permission. He shot the drone with a shotgun. I forget if he was arrested on the spot, but I think he got in huge legal trouble -- apparently in the US, shooting at a drone is treated the same as shooting at a manned aircraft, and he might have ended up getting multiple years in prison.
Shooting a human trespasser has a pretty high legal bar, and rightfully so. Shooting a robotic trespasser seems like it shouldn't carry prison time, even if unjustified it should only carry financial penalties. Especially if the law doesn't specify any peaceful recourse to get rid of unwanted robots trespassing on your property.
Worth noting this happened in a controlled service rollout with low flight volumes, and no one was injured. Investigating a rare failure after launch is exactly how aviation systems mature. You don’t get to zero incidents without operating in the real world. Grounding the program every time a prototype misbehaves would guarantee they never ship anything.
(jk, I don't actually work for Amazon's PR team. Just sarcastically beating them to the HN comment section)
Anyone else too news-aware and parsed "drone strike" as a verb the first time?
Yeah, "Amazon drone strikes North Texas" definitely evokes a different image.
The solution space of maximum engagement and easily misinterpreted headlines overlaps quite a bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
“delivery above recommended speed”
Sustained winds in Dallas on Wednesday, Feb 4, were around 10–15 mph, with occasional gusts approaching ~30 mph. I wonder how well delivery drone station keeping works when the wind suddenly gusts by 20 mph.
As far as I can tell, Zipline are way out ahead in this space right now.
Other news sources:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/07/delive...
https://www.theverge.com/tech/875475/amazon-delivery-drone-c...
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/08/us/video/amazon-drone-deliver...
This is the latest in a string of accidents with these drones crashing into things. Not good.
The earlier ones hit a crane which one could argue was an edge case as a temporary structure. This just hit a building which suggests something much more fundamentally wrong with the tech.
Vibe steering and navigating
I wonder what the acceptable collisions/delivery needs to be for it to match last mile truck safety level (ie UPS trucks are big and run into things with non-zero frequency)
I'm sure there's a surprisingly high frequency of "acceptable" collisions if the bar is matching truck-inflicted property damage and injuries. Much like with replacing human drivers with computers, though, merely matching the cost and harms of the existing system is far from enough. Entrenched systems benefit from familiarity with the associated costs and risks, and from any structures built to mitigate them. New solutions have to be much better to gain acceptance.
Fortunately, automated systems can meet that higher threshold so long as we actually aim for it. If you aim for the lower "beats existing systems by some measures" bar then you make stupid decisions and tradeoffs like rushing to market or leaving out more capable sensors. We ought to try to make new technologies as good as possible. Sometimes the market will bet against that, but that's a tide that engineers should fight back against. Trucks kill too many people, and if drones kill half as many that's still unacceptable. We can do better.
> merely matching the cost and harms of the existing system is far from enough
The new system needs to be better but that doesn’t necessarily mean safer.
For delivery, that could mean cheaper and faster and more convenient.
Autonomous vehicles are a special case because those accidents tend to cause death and serious injury. As long as delivery drones can avoid killing multiple people per year, they are probably fine to compete on other metrics.
People are more accepting when there's a person who can be punished. There's also the fact that society generally expects cars/trucks hitting things. A drone impact might be a more minor impact, but it's possible for it to hit things that are more shocking to the public if they get hit.
>The earlier ones hit a crane which one could argue was an edge case as a temporary structure.
I would expect them not to fly into any kind of structure. That they'd hit a crane is pretty insane considering what the results of something like that could be.
Zero? I think the expected number of collisions can be larger than zero. Jimmy Johns sandwich delivery by bicycle has resulted in more collisions than zero and that is arguably safe.
You are setting an impossible standard.
I would expect the result to be the same as running into anything else: drone and any payload crash into the ground.
Drones are lightweight, they're not going to do much to heavy machinery. Basically the same as a brick wall.
The real fear is propellers hitting a human. The result is not good at all.
They weigh 80-85lbs and travel at speeds of around 50mph.
The impact would be quite serious, if they crash at speed but even falling on a car or a human would be quite serious, possibly deadly, even if the propellers don't spin.
Also drone and payload falling to the ground from any kind of height could cause serious injury or death if it falls on someone.
Which is the argument against flying cars. Uncontrolled flying car crashes over populated areas could be catastrophic.
"Another clip shows the drone on the ground with smoke coming from it."
if true, its a matter of repetition, and probability, until the time one of these crashes starts something on fire.
Already safer than delivery vans.
“That’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
Looks like they didn’t meet the minimum crew requirement on this one.
Last paragraph:
> The Federal Aviation Administration opened an investigation into Amazon’s drone delivery program in November after one of its drone struck an Internet cable line in Waco.
Looks like the rest of that sentence has been cut off: "... but the company doesn't expect to be punished, since it spent $75 million dollars bribing President Trump in the form of the Melania movie.".