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Comment by dmos62 | Hacker News Reader

Do delivery cars, scooters, trucks not produce noise? Is this a complaint about delivery drones or delivery? Tracking technology will always be at our fingertips. I don't think you'd want a world where that wasn't true. It's governmental regulation that's the answer to large scale abuse.

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> Do delivery cars, scooters, trucks not produce noise?

There are a lot of existing laws about aircraft noise that cars, trucks and scooters don't need to worry about. And once you reach a certain number of takeoffs and landings your "airport" falls under additional regulations that require things like permanent noise monitoring and paying money for noise abatement for nearby property owners.

In my state, any citizen can file a public nuisance suit for unreasonable noise that interferes with quality of life. With trucks, cars and scooters it is perhaps a little difficult to track and attribute noise sources. One company making thousands of drone deliveries makes for a very easy target.

And there are separate laws for cars and truck noise too.

* California limits exhaust noise to 95 dBa: http://www.californiacarlaws.com/exhaust-noise/

* Colorado has a subjective standard "prevent any excessive or unusual noise" https://law.justia.com/codes/colorado/2016/title-42/regulati...

* Connecticut has a pretty complicated scheme depending on the vehicle's weight and age, as well as the road surface: https://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/rpt/2009-R-0205.htm

* Delaware has a subjective standard: "muffler in good working order and in accordance with manufacturer's specifications and in constant operation to prevent excessive or unusual noise." https://law.justia.com/codes/delaware/2015/title-21/chapter-...

There are, of course, laws about other sources of noise too. Ask any college kid.

* California limits exhaust noise to 95 dBa: http://www.californiacarlaws.com/exhaust-noise/

The level of enforcement for this has to be something like zero....

Regulation of the commons is pretty essential: it's not really feasible to "buy" silence in public places.

As for cars and trucks, the noise they produce is regulated in about half of the US: https://www.semasan.com/resources/exhaust-noise-laws-state

A delivery truck can transport half a dozen cubic meters or hundreds of kilograms of packages with ease. Replacing it with drones increases the noise level quite a bit.

What about an Uber Eats scooter? Also, a drone can be a last mile delivery method, where the very heavy truck ends up doing relatively long runs for single small packages.

Instead of replacing Uber Eats scooters with even louder drones, how about we replace them with silent eletric scooters, or bicycles? This can be done today, without any new technology or additional safety concerns.

How about we replace these sctooers with local eateries/restaurants/cafeterias which you walk to, meet people at, and eat locally-produced, locally-sourced food?

I'd be in favor, but that seems a lot harder than buying electric scooters.

Somehow I think demolishing the suburbs is somewhat out of scope for this discussion

Trust me people would complain far more about the smell of local micronranches and micro farms, even ignoring the economics involved.

1. Complaining is a national sport in many countries... I'd probably be doing a lot of complaining myself - but I would have a community context in which to complain.

2. I didn't say there would be micro-farms and micro-ranches. I don't believe in "village-level" autarchy. But in my view there should be much less ferrying of food from halfway across the world because people work there for a couple of USD per day and ship fuel is (still) cheap.

3. My point was that it's a huge waste of social resources, not to mention fuel, to send out vehicles across town to deliver food. It's also part of a process of social atomization where more and more of our interactions are mediated and modulated by impersonal commercial processes.

Non-electric scooters should be banned. Or especially the dirt bikes in the city.

I tend to agree. Those little two-cycle scooters howling down the road at like 110dB are just terrible. Way beyond any reasonable definition of acceptable.

They generate more pollution than a pickup truck. As do gas lawnmowers for that matter.

> I don't think you'd want a world where that wasn't true.

Again, I'm speechless at the level of indoctrination. It is for my own good!

I'll be working on my next business idea. A shower head with an invisible camera that streams to the manufacturer for the protection of the shower user. After all, he might slip and the device could call an ambulance.

The shower head could monitor if the user is overweight and send some weight-loss ads. It is for the user's own good!

Also, I'll make it opt-out, and the opt-out process will be in a shrink wrap license.

It is all for our own good!

> Also, I'll make it opt-out, and the opt-out process will be in a shrink wrap license.

I do not understand this point.

It's the idea that you can opt out, but the process is not simple or advertised. It will probably involve a notary, registered post and a fax of your government-issued ID.

You're too quick on the trigger. Going from a smart device to a smart device that tracks is technologically trivial. If you consider that the problem, you'll end up retreating to the 1800s. That's why I said that surveillance will always be "at our fingertips". I don't think that mass surveillance is for our own good. Why would I call it abuse if I though it were?

It would be going back to the period of 1995-2005.

IoT devices are often evil, and I would no longer be surprised if anyone took the above business "idea" as a manual and went ahead with it.

It would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, and those were better times in that respect (and many others).

drones make a much more annoying sound than most vehicles. closest comparison I can think of is a dirtbike. imagine how irritating it would be if deliveries were made via dirtbike at scale.

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