Hacker News Reader

Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

You're right that they need to address those concerns. I'd like to see that analysis also include any possible reduced injury/death from fewer delivery truck miles and fewer consumer car trips to the local store.

I have no idea if it will offset or not, but I could see—even with a few thousand drones crashing every year—that a net benefit could still be realized because people are not driving to the store for some of their shopping.

View on HN

Sure, using drones instead of trucks could be a net win in safety if it means less drivers on the road, but this seems unlikely -- one driver in a UPS truck can deliver hundreds of packages on his route, but since the drone has such limited payload capacity, it might need to make a round trip per package so it would take hundreds of drone trips to replace one driver with a truck. And, since heavy packages aren't realistic for a drone, the truck is still going to drive much of his delivery route to deliver the heavy packages.

> the truck is still going to drive much of his delivery route to deliver the heavy packages

How this will exist in the future in practice is pure speculation at this time. There are many different factors (autonomous vehicles, smarter routing techniques, routing changes as the burden is shifted to non-truck delivery systems, and increased demand for small package delivery as more shopping is done online, for example) that could dramatically reshape the delivery landscape.

Furthermore, heavy packages delivered to consumers in the US, like those containing appliances and furniture, are already routinely delivered by in-house or smaller delivery services rather than UPS, FedEx, or US Mail.

What if a drone costs 100x less than a delivery driver? You can have 100 drones out delivery packages for the same cost of one delivery driver delivering one package at a time.

It would be interesting to see data on what % of amazon purchases are above the payload of a drone - i imagine they crunched the numbers themselves and determined it was low enough to justify continuing to push this issue (even after the FAA tried to ban[1] drone deliveries altogether)

Theyll look at $/package and time/package for drones and delivery drivers.

I imagine once you account for driver salary and benefits, cost of vehicles, cost of fuel and maintenance, cost of insurance for drivers and vehicles, cost of management structure to maintain drivers, schedules, routes, etc - the $/package for drones likely make up for any disadvantage they currently have in time/package

Also, drones can deliver packages 24/7/365, no reason you cant wake up to a package delivered overnight (maybe even your morning kindle (tm) e-ink newspaper)

[1]http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-drones-...

As drones and other autonomous machine/robots start to replace human employees, I expect to hear calls to tax them to recoup the social externalities. If they are taxed enough, then there is no longer an advantage to using them over human employees.

The fallacy in that thinking is left as an exercise for the reader.

The externalities might be smaller than the profit. Ie even with all externalities internalized via taxes, it might still beat humans.

24/7/365 seems overly optimistic, weather alone will most likely cut out many of those trips. Depending on the type of collision avoidance technology used may further limit night time operation.

I've seen some estimates of costs per package shipment via drone at less than $1, while currently amazon might pay $6 per package.

I should have left UPS out of my comment. You're right about that.

But if drones are replacing car trips to the store, then there's a good opportunity there to offset automobile fatalities

I think setting up a regular UPS truck with a couple of drones that land on the roof to pick up small packages and deliver them is pretty compelling.

In Houston there are only a couple of logistic centers for UPS and FedEx and whatnot. You wouldn't have a drone fly 40 (or maybe 100) miles round-trip to deliver a package all the way across town.

But if every regular delivery truck has 2x or 3x drones on top they can make small package deliveries without the driver stopping on his route as he/she delivers the bigger packages. The ones too heavy for a drone to lift.

The drones could make deliveries during the driver's lunch break which is a nice bonus. An hour with the truck parked in the same spot.

You could also have drone-specific semis that go on a very slow rotation around the city, moving a few miles quickly and then stopping so the drones can make deliveries from a "home base".

Drones are a good last mile solution but will never replace the back haul network. Wheel on pavement has incredible efficiency versus rotor through air.

UPS-type drivers are very safe. There are lots of trucks, resulting in many accidents nationwide, but they are far safer than the average driver. (Remember that many/most road deaths occur at night and have some relationship to alcohol.) So taking some of them off the road won't contribute much compared to the slight but undeniable risk of a drone-aircraft collision killing many.

Yeah, they have tremendous safety records. I should have focused on the other "opportunity cost" of fewer deaths dues to fewer car trips made by consumers.

Also, we have no idea what the drone-aircraft collision risk is. That seems like something that could be easily solved by strict control over who flies where in the sky. I'd guess that more people will die from these things falling on their head.

They sure block traffic a lot though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com