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Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

Do they magically appear at your house with no addition driving involved?

(Sorry, that came off snarkier than I intended. Online ordering of food just kind of outsources the driving, doesn’t reduce it. Different maybe for delivery trucks that serve multiple houses per trip.)

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Not magically, but if you have one delivery vehicle making a route by n addresses, could that not be more efficient than n independent round trips?

It can be more efficient but the question remains if it's more likely to kill than otherwise (not all travel miles are equal).

In one state 34% of traffic fatalities involved alcohol. So Uber may do more for that than grocery delivery.

Grocery delivery drivers may also be better drivers because drive more often. Or, they may be overworked and rushing to complete deliveries.

Stats on % of car accidents (esp. fatalities) involving delivery vehicles would be good to see actually, they must be available somewhere?

The DOT almost certainly tracks "real" delivery drivers (think: semi trucks, etc), but who knows how much gets reported from fly-by-night outfits like Uber and Doordash.

https://cdan.dot.gov/query could probably return something useful if poked long enough.

could be, isn't though.

So what's your plan then for groceries to magically appear in someone's house without driving or delivery?

And if you say walk or bike or bus you clearly have very different shopping than I do - let me see you carry 2 cases of 15 bottles of seltzer, and a cart full of groceries on any of those.

When a supermarket is only a 10 minute walk away (20 minutes round trip), you just go more often and carry smaller amounts. Even if you suddenly needed 30 bottles of seltzer in the same day, you can just walk there and back twice.

If the supermarket is only 0.5 miles away, it's going to be quite small.

Normal sized supermarkets are in the range of 5 or so miles apart.

I am not interested in living in a place where tiny stores are my only option.

Also, why would I want to waste my time walking 20 minutes multiple times a week, plus time in the store? That sounds dreadful, why would you want that?

Also, there’s more distribution costs and more distribution driving for numerous small stores Vs big stores.

I don’t really have a plan, just pointing out how it just moves around who is driving. One option is to buy in bulk vast majority of stuff to make fewer trips and then have delivery trucks do fresh/perishable groceries, like the ol’ milkman. Which, of course, is already a thing but a bit different from the newer grocery delivery model.

Also, while I like the sidewalk robot pod things and flying delivery drones, I legitimately like the idea of delivering stuff with PVC pipes and little electric pods. A little on the small side for groceries, but seems pretty doable without adding congestion or noise (to surface streets or the air). https://i.pipedreamlabs.co/

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