High turnover and safety issues are hurting Amazon’s drone program.

The following month, a drone’s motor shut off as it switched from an upward flight path to flying straight ahead. Two safety features — one that’s supposed to land the drone in this type of situation and another that stabilizes the drone — both failed. As a result, the drone flipped upside down and dropped from 160 feet in the air, leading to a brush fire that stretched across 25 acres. It was later put out by the local fire department.

  • john_browns_beard [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    These things are probably waterproof and I'm sure they are huge, they can probably handle a decent amount of wind.

    My concern is birds, power lines, etc. that they either can't plan for or might not "see". I'm going to guess that dozens of pedestrians get maimed or killed in the first few weeks if they ever seriously roll these things out, and amazon will have a massive specialized legal team prepared to handle it.

      • Bobson_Dugnutt [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-c1-colorado-drones-20140116-dto-htmlstory.html

        • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
          ·
          3 years ago

          The most interesting part is towards the end.

          It turned out that Steel was a suspect involving a strange incident at his workplace in Arvada, about 60 miles away, in which a co-worker told police that when he picked up his telephone, liquid mercury oozed out of the receiver and onto his face.

    • furryanarchy [comrade/them,they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It would cause new regulations on commercial uses of drones to be made, no doubt. Which would probably affect drones that shoot videos and photos that are monitized.