Comment by binarymax
Comment by binarymax 2 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by binarymax 2 days ago
[flagged]
There are a lot of solutions to this that involve neither vans nor drones:
1. Properly ticket and reprimand the people breaking traffic laws.
2. Properly reprimand the companies who contract out and run the vans.
3. Build cities that don't necessitate driving everywhere for everything.
4. Buy things in stores.
Solid meh from me. Only thing I really don’t like about it is it’s likely to impact the personal rights to fly drones we enjoy today (which are already being chipped away).
Otherwise, they’re probably not very loud or frequent, don’t really present much of a privacy issue vs. what street view already has, and they maybe make the roads a bit safer. Might take some jobs away from delivery van drivers. Nothing seems worth getting overly concerned for.
Probably half my immediate neighbors get an amazon delivery a day. The truck makes sometimes two or three stops throughout the day and is there for like 15-20 minutes running packages. The thought of that replaced with drone traffic is crazy. It would be like dozens of landings and overflights per hour. It is already bad enough when the realtors fly their drones overhead. I can't imagine the birds and bees aren't getting stressed out if it's managing to piss me off.
Same. Even outside the holiday season, there are 5+ package truck deliveries/day on my little street (12 houses). That's UPS, FedEx, USPS, usually multiple Amazon (which always surprises me), plus a couple unmarked vans. Plus couriers in cars. Plus food delivery, at least 2 a night. Almost all the Amazon vans are now electric Rivians or GMCs.
That's a LOT of drone traffic, given there's near zero ability to double up on a single stop as there is today.
I recently started seeing electric delivery vans from IKEA in my city. One thing I really noticed: They are whisper quiet compared to diesel trucks.
Yeah, it makes a massive difference in the neighborhood, where speeds are so low (10mph or so) there isn't much tire noise.
Now if we could just get our landscape crew (HOA, not mine personally) to adopt electric leaf blowers. I hate this time of year and the constant roar of those things.
What on earth are people buying that's delivered so frequently? I find the whole concept of frequent deliveries confusing.
who cares what they are buying. it's truly none of your business. there are people that buy things on a whim and do not even for a second think about slowing down to buy things at once to reduce the number of deliveries. if they did that, they'd forget about it and not actually purchase that whim. there could also be multiple independent people at the same address buying things in this manner.
Sounds like there’s an opportunity for bigger drones where you are. Lower frequency noise, fewer flights if you can drop more than one package per flight.
I just have a hard time seeing this becoming a major quality of life issue in the real world. It’s gonna be fine.
And birds and bees seem to be fine around waterfalls and airports, I think they’ll survive drone noise.
Annoying drone buzzing when it works, 80lb bricks from heaven when it doesn't. Not really looking forward to that future.
I already get annoyed at police helicopters hovering at night. I can only imagine what dozens of different delivery services would sound like.
Stick some thin strong wire up over your back garden, and order a bunch of stuff from Amazon.
There. Now you have a whole bunch of free drone parts.
no, you're probably not the only one. bring it up at the next concerned citizens action committee meeting
Consider that drones substitute for cars and trucks driving through neighborhoods.
For the same payload delivered, ground vehicles cause significantly more property damage, environmental damage, and injuries/deaths.
A truck travels a greater distance to deliver those 500 packages to the same locations, as it must take roads instead of flying in a straight line. And roads are much more likely to have people on them than a random patch of ground. Also the truck weighs several tons. The weight requires more energy to move stuff around, and has more kinetic energy than an 80lb drone.
You should really consider how much energy it takes to levitate an 80lb drone while flying across town, compared to how much energy it takes to roll an 8000lb van across town (even ignoring the fact that the van might deliver 100 packages while making it's way across town).
It's almost as if .. if noise, property damage, enviro damage, injury and death.. are the problems, then we should regulate everything that do those things equally rather than trying to pick winners among various transport modes. But among other things, this would mean holding people responsible for the incredible damage anyone can do with a car and the people will not stand for being told they cannot go vroom vroom. Additionally since we refuse to regulate until there is a crisis, anything that is new automatically has an advantage over anything that is old, regardless of which causes fewer issues per unit of work (package delivery etc).
"I don't want a noisy neighborhood, but I want to drive my two-ton death trap that you can't see toddlers in front of and I also don't want to see any of my neighbors and also I want any object in the world deliverable within 24 hours."
I chuckled when I read this post. It is well written sarcasm. I will say observing some if the "individual driver vs. X wars" on HN (usually between North Americans), there are many who think this way.
>"I don't want a noisy neighborhood, but I want to drive my two-ton death trap that you can't see toddlers in front of and I also don't want to see any of my neighbors and also I want any object in the world deliverable within 24 hours."
I live in a noisy neighborhood with commercial truck thru traffic.
I don't have any particular love for the noise or the trucks, but the kind of people who complain about noise and machines will mostly don't select to live here which is good because I find those people to be bad generally.
I see the downsides. But I also see the delivery vans in my neighborhood that are always double parking and blocking traffic. At least in the air, traffic can be routed in 3d.