There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property -- maybe some kind of "no trespassing" beacon that acts a machine readable "no trespassing" sign? -- and recourse to deal with unwelcome drones.
I was watching a YouTube bodycam video showing police interaction with a guy who got upset that a Walmart delivery drone test was being performed on his property without permission. He shot the drone with a shotgun. I forget if he was arrested on the spot, but I think he got in huge legal trouble -- apparently in the US, shooting at a drone is treated the same as shooting at a manned aircraft, and he might have ended up getting multiple years in prison.
Shooting a human trespasser has a pretty high legal bar, and rightfully so. Shooting a robotic trespasser seems like it shouldn't carry prison time, even if unjustified it should only carry financial penalties. Especially if the law doesn't specify any peaceful recourse to get rid of unwanted robots trespassing on your property.
> There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property
Does there? Why? There's no legal means to keep private aircraft (e.g. a Cessna) from flying over your property as long as they're over 500 feet. Then drones are below that, typically between 50-400 feet.
They're already not allowed to interfere with your property or privacy however. They can't hover to annoy you, or get close to snap pictures or whatever.
If you're concerned about accidents and safety, then the solution is safety regulation. But the idea that drones must keep track of which individual properties allow flight above and which don't, and try to navigate some around some kind of patchwork accordingly, is simply unpractical and unreasonable.
If drones turn out to be a general nuisance then cities/counties can ban them altogether or whatever as a collective decision, but the idea that individual property owners should be able to ban them is a terrible idea.
>There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property
no, there really doesn't need to be.
i'm not saying that i'm in favor of autonomous drones flying around, i'm simply not in favor of individual people getting their own say about everything we as a society do. democracy: live with the results
it's not shooting at drones that is the big worry, it's missing the drones, and shooting at things if the law doesn't give a peaceful alternate way to get your own way is also not "great" in the pantheon of ideas.
What goes up, must come down. Not always in a good way.
Or as we pilots say it, takeoff is optional, landing is mandatory.
I'm glad we don't permit this stuff where I live. And do we really need orders in 60 minutes? Next day in the pickup machine around the corner is good enough.
Probably not necessary, but it can be quite convenient.
In the late '90s a company called Kozmo.com was doing 60 minute delivery in several cities of some basic food and snack, games, CDs, DVDs, magazines, books, and some other things.
It was pretty nice one night when I started watching "Seven Samurai" on a basic cable channel, and about 30 minutes in got annoyed at the number of commercial breaks they were inserting. During the next break I popped onto the computer, ordered the movie on DVD, along with some microwave popcorn and some drinks. I then went back to watching on TV.
About 15 minutes later their driver showed up, and 5 minutes after that I was watching from the DVD and eating my popcorn.
Sustained winds in Dallas on Wednesday, Feb 4, were around 10–15 mph, with occasional gusts approaching ~30 mph. I wonder how well delivery drone station keeping works when the wind suddenly gusts by 20 mph.
> The Federal Aviation Administration opened an investigation into Amazon’s drone delivery program in November after one of its drone struck an Internet cable line in Waco.
Looks like the rest of that sentence has been cut off: "... but the company doesn't expect to be punished, since it spent $75 million dollars bribing President Trump in the form of the Melania movie.".
This is the latest in a string of accidents with these drones crashing into things. Not good.
The earlier ones hit a crane which one could argue was an edge case as a temporary structure. This just hit a building which suggests something much more fundamentally wrong with the tech.
I wonder what the acceptable collisions/delivery needs to be for it to match last mile truck safety level (ie UPS trucks are big and run into things with non-zero frequency)
Please be specific on what you mean by "just"? From the article:
> Amazon told CBS Texas that it’s investigating the cause of the crash that happened Wednesday afternoon.
Did it hit a bird? Did the wind blow something into it? Was it a 0.01% occurrence of some hardware failure? Who knows. Design flaw?
Extrapolating a few crashes within this new tech use case to a some fundamental flaw of drone flight isn't reasonable, at the moment.
I suppose a safe alternative would be pneumatic tubes dug to everyone's door. But, only things that are economically feasible can exist in the world. So, instead of perfection, we're left with the iteration and compromise that is engineering, regulations and enforcement to bound it, and insurance to catch the edge cases.
A large part of the FAA regulation around drones is one based on existing in reality, and it's lack of perfection, which is how much damage they can do (this is what limits the weight and speed).
>The earlier ones hit a crane which one could argue was an edge case as a temporary structure.
I would expect them not to fly into any kind of structure. That they'd hit a crane is pretty insane considering what the results of something like that could be.
csense|21 days ago
I was watching a YouTube bodycam video showing police interaction with a guy who got upset that a Walmart delivery drone test was being performed on his property without permission. He shot the drone with a shotgun. I forget if he was arrested on the spot, but I think he got in huge legal trouble -- apparently in the US, shooting at a drone is treated the same as shooting at a manned aircraft, and he might have ended up getting multiple years in prison.
Shooting a human trespasser has a pretty high legal bar, and rightfully so. Shooting a robotic trespasser seems like it shouldn't carry prison time, even if unjustified it should only carry financial penalties. Especially if the law doesn't specify any peaceful recourse to get rid of unwanted robots trespassing on your property.
gretch|21 days ago
I agree. It should be the same one we use for helicopters and airplanes.
crazygringo|21 days ago
Does there? Why? There's no legal means to keep private aircraft (e.g. a Cessna) from flying over your property as long as they're over 500 feet. Then drones are below that, typically between 50-400 feet.
They're already not allowed to interfere with your property or privacy however. They can't hover to annoy you, or get close to snap pictures or whatever.
If you're concerned about accidents and safety, then the solution is safety regulation. But the idea that drones must keep track of which individual properties allow flight above and which don't, and try to navigate some around some kind of patchwork accordingly, is simply unpractical and unreasonable.
If drones turn out to be a general nuisance then cities/counties can ban them altogether or whatever as a collective decision, but the idea that individual property owners should be able to ban them is a terrible idea.
duxup|20 days ago
fsckboy|21 days ago
no, there really doesn't need to be.
i'm not saying that i'm in favor of autonomous drones flying around, i'm simply not in favor of individual people getting their own say about everything we as a society do. democracy: live with the results
it's not shooting at drones that is the big worry, it's missing the drones, and shooting at things if the law doesn't give a peaceful alternate way to get your own way is also not "great" in the pantheon of ideas.
wolvoleo|21 days ago
Or as we pilots say it, takeoff is optional, landing is mandatory.
I'm glad we don't permit this stuff where I live. And do we really need orders in 60 minutes? Next day in the pickup machine around the corner is good enough.
tzs|21 days ago
Probably not necessary, but it can be quite convenient.
In the late '90s a company called Kozmo.com was doing 60 minute delivery in several cities of some basic food and snack, games, CDs, DVDs, magazines, books, and some other things.
It was pretty nice one night when I started watching "Seven Samurai" on a basic cable channel, and about 30 minutes in got annoyed at the number of commercial breaks they were inserting. During the next break I popped onto the computer, ordered the movie on DVD, along with some microwave popcorn and some drinks. I then went back to watching on TV.
About 15 minutes later their driver showed up, and 5 minutes after that I was watching from the DVD and eating my popcorn.
gdulli|21 days ago
robotnikman|21 days ago
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/07/delive...
https://www.theverge.com/tech/875475/amazon-delivery-drone-c...
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/08/us/video/amazon-drone-deliver...
npilk|21 days ago
delichon|21 days ago
rolph|21 days ago
if true, its a matter of repetition, and probability, until the time one of these crashes starts something on fire.
hiddencost|21 days ago
bethekidyouwant|21 days ago
davidhyde|21 days ago
Looks like they didn’t meet the minimum crew requirement on this one.
eichin|21 days ago
aleksiy123|21 days ago
hermannj314|21 days ago
MengerSponge|21 days ago
escapecharacter|21 days ago
hulitu|19 days ago
gib444|21 days ago
[deleted]
netsharc|21 days ago
> The Federal Aviation Administration opened an investigation into Amazon’s drone delivery program in November after one of its drone struck an Internet cable line in Waco.
Looks like the rest of that sentence has been cut off: "... but the company doesn't expect to be punished, since it spent $75 million dollars bribing President Trump in the form of the Melania movie.".
cmiles8|21 days ago
The earlier ones hit a crane which one could argue was an edge case as a temporary structure. This just hit a building which suggests something much more fundamentally wrong with the tech.
ecosystem|21 days ago
nomel|21 days ago
Please be specific on what you mean by "just"? From the article:
> Amazon told CBS Texas that it’s investigating the cause of the crash that happened Wednesday afternoon.
Did it hit a bird? Did the wind blow something into it? Was it a 0.01% occurrence of some hardware failure? Who knows. Design flaw?
Extrapolating a few crashes within this new tech use case to a some fundamental flaw of drone flight isn't reasonable, at the moment.
I suppose a safe alternative would be pneumatic tubes dug to everyone's door. But, only things that are economically feasible can exist in the world. So, instead of perfection, we're left with the iteration and compromise that is engineering, regulations and enforcement to bound it, and insurance to catch the edge cases.
A large part of the FAA regulation around drones is one based on existing in reality, and it's lack of perfection, which is how much damage they can do (this is what limits the weight and speed).
freejazz|21 days ago
I would expect them not to fly into any kind of structure. That they'd hit a crane is pretty insane considering what the results of something like that could be.
walt_grata|21 days ago