Good point. I come from a low-rise city (Christchurch, New Zealand) so I'd forgotten about that. I suppose you could designate a safe spot, perhaps on the roof of the apartment?

I'm not sure why this keeps being mentioned. Seems easy enough to build a common landing zone for pickups. Roof, open grass area, etc. If you were an apartment owner, is there no way you could think of solving that issue?

so install a drone landing pad on the roof..

As the regulatory and commercial frameworks evolve, I can see how buildings would have dedicated landing zones (likely on roofs)… the XXI century equivalent of mailboxes.

Why does this thing even have to land?

Can't it drop each package with a mini parachute from about roof-top level with good accuracy? Or even 10ft, just above the height of most kids, dogs, cars and adults.

The whole thing shouldn't weigh very much, assuming it's limited to delivering lightweight objects, and the rotors could be covered with a screen. I don't see much potential for danger. The worst thing that could happen would be a total system failure causing it to drop out of the sky, and even that could probably be mitigated with something like a failsafe that deploys a parachute if the speed is too high.

It should be safer than multi-ton delivery trucks, which can and have killed people. I was a mailman at one time - we were required to get out and look behind the truck before backing up because a mailman once killed a toddler who wandered behind his truck (though I doubt very many carriers actually follow that rule).

Interesting, thanks for the research. I guess I shouldn't be too shocked, but it is a bit surprising (we have an enormous land mass).