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Comment by Invictus0 | Hacker News Reader

Seems strange that Swiss Post would be the first to test out these drones, given the extremely high standard of quality that the Swiss demand. The reality is that any new technology, especially hardware, will need time to mature and work out the bugs. One crash out of 3000 isn't that bad: reality has a lot of edge cases to test for.

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> One crash out of 3000 isn't that bad

It is actually very bad. Amazon ships ~2M packages per day by one estimates. Assume only 10% of these gets drone delivered. This would translate to 66 crashes each day. If only 10% of these crashes happen on people, it would be 6 people randomly getting killed each day.

This isn't a constant linear crash rate. Each crash creates the impetus for a more robust product generation. But in the beginning, you should expect to see things go wrong. See SpaceX for example.

People getting hit on the head is not acceptable whilst the technology and standards mature. A few rockets blowing up, without hurting anyone, is acceptable whilst technology matures.

So far as I can tell - nobody has (yet?) been hit on the head with a delivery drone.

May the odds forever be in your favor ;)

How many people die from crashes related to delivering packages in our current form?

I'm guessing its != 0

People often miss a big point here. Delivery truck crashing into car is a human mistake. There was another human involved who could have severe punishment including death, loss of job, loss of wealth etc. Humans killing 10,000 humans each day in driving mistake is not same as drones killing 10,000 humans each day due to random tech failure. Even if drones killed only 1000 humans and there was a net reduction of 90% of deaths, I bet it would not be acceptable to larger human society.

You can do a thought experiment: Let's say airplanes failed at 100X of current rates but it was relatively still less number of deaths if people drove that distance by themselves. Would you be able to argue airplane failure rate was still acceptable? For drones, I bet there would be an immediate movement for banning the whole thing if there was a single drone ever fell on playing kindergartners randomly. This is one situation where just bringing data and making rational arguments don't work.

I'm baffled that technology-related accidental deaths that can be and will be reduced by technology could feel somehow unacceptable, whereas a higher risk of human caused deaths would be OK just because you hope these humans will be punished somehow.

Let's punish drones then...

> Let's say airplanes failed at 100X rates but it was relatively still less number of deaths if people drove that distance by themselves. Would you be able to argue airplane failure rate was still acceptable?

For me? Absolutely. For most of the people I spend time with? Yes. For the majority of the population? No.

This is why bringing numbers and logic to the arena is so important.

Otherwise, we spend billions avoiding 10 deaths while we could avoid other deaths for mere thousands. Much like coal and nuclear. The level of lunacy is hard to deal with for me.

> Delivery truck crashing into car is a human mistake.

Actually, all drone mistakes are human mistakes. Even if the drone was put together by machine, it was a human process that created it.

If you look at the surface area of the world, a tiny percentage of it is taken up by people's heads. Like, probably <.01%. Unless you'r eat a large gathering (where right now it's illegal to fly drones.)

If you look at the surface area of the world serviced by Amazon delivery and population densities there, chances it hits someone's head are pretty decent.

It's not just people's heads that need protection. Roads, traffic lights, cars, power lines, windows... people can die in lots of ways other than having a drone fall directly on their head.

Agreed, 1 out of 3000 is horrible. To be a viable business delivery drones will have to have a safety record at least reasonably close to that of conventional road delivery. I would hope regulators would demand this but I'm sure that insurance providers will. Conventional road delivery services have to carry insurance and the cost of that is related to how often they get into accidents and how severe they are. If delivery drones cause more property damage and injury then their insurance costs will be higher.

As a Swiss I find the combination of Swiss Post and High standards hilarious.

[1] https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/sonntagszeitung/postautoskandal...

[2] https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/2019/03/12/gravierende-...

[3] https://www.tagblatt.ch/schweiz/umstrukturierung-postumbau-m...

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