Is the current model better?

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/1-killed-after-bus-deli...

That's just a story I found after 10 seconds of Googling. The broader point is that having your packages delivered fast-moving multiton machines controlled by fallible people and sharing space with pedestrians and other people-controlled machines is a very dangerous state of affairs. That there are risks in alternative means is true enough, but it's important to measure those risks relative to the status quo and not just assume they're purely additive.

But because we're human, we're bad at that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias

Of course googling you will find multiple fatality accidents with current drive and drop delivery methods. As of 2007 there were 254.4 million passenger cars registered in the US alone. That number has most likely continued to increase since this.

Until someone does some real quantitative risk studies; the risk is uncertain in comparison. It will only take one child seriously injured from one of these copters though for Amazon to be slapped with a major lawsuit; worse than the lawsuit though will be the public backlash from angry and indignant customers should something like this happen.

"It will only take one child seriously injured by one of these motorized carriages though for Ford to be slapped with a major lawsuit"

To be more nuanced about it, there's a big difference between this being a good or bad idea for humanity and this being an optimal or suboptimal move for Amazon. That there might be lawsuits and backlash even if it actually reduces the number of accidents might make it a poor play by Amazon, but it doesn't make it a bad idea in some ethical sense. For example, perhaps you're saying that even though it might save lives and improve efficiency, the current regulatory framework and public disposition make this kind of advance impossible (compare to cars hitting the streets in a different era). So there's a sort of normative versus positive question here. Perhaps you're talking about the latter, which is fine (and of course debatable), but I'm interested in the former. Especially so because the normative stuff is an input to tech policy debates and the positive stuff is its output, so you inform the debate by figuring out what the end result you want is.

But maybe you're not saying that; maybe you're saying "well, we don't know how risky drones are and maybe, safety-wise, it's a big step backwards" and the part about lawsuits and stuff was sort of a separate point. That's true enough. The reason I gave the Fed-Ex crash example was just to point out that it does not follow from an RC helicopter accident in Queens that drone deliveries are a bad idea. But it's true that the relative safety of cars and drones is unknown (and, as you can tell, I have a guess about it). Now the issue is that you need some way to find out. Or resign to never advancing at all. Human studies of new medicines encounter this problem too, yet few people are saying, "I don't want any medicinal advancements."

The reality is that if you want to improve society, you're going to have to take some risks with some unknowns. Perhaps you try it in some select cities in some limited fashion and build from there. (Think it's unethical to experiment on humans? What about the hundred-year, totally uncontrolled experiment we've been conducting using automobiles? I certainly didn't sign up for it. The status quo is not a special case.) Look at it like this: what does the world look like in three hundred years? I'd like to think it looks like something from Star Trek. So what, schematically, are the steps to get from here to there? How do you draw a line from 2013 to 2313? Because I'm pretty sure it doesn't involve "we don't have flying robots, so we don't know if they're dangerous, so no flying robots."

The victim in your link, if you look at the picture, was flying a single-rotor helicopter with what looks to be a 4+ foot wingspan.

The prototype in the Amazon video is an 8-rotor helicopter with little 4 to 6 inch wingspans. Anything that goes to production will have to pass FAA approval, so they will probably end up with some sort of hoop guard at the least.

Negativity for the sake of negativity?

Not negativity for the sake of negativity. While the link I posted is a large single rotor helicopter, I was trying to show a worst case scenario. If Amazon Air does get off the ground then I would imagine the program expanding to delivering heavier packages over time, which would require larger quad copters and thus larger rotors and higher risk of more serious injuries.

I have built and fly hobby planes and copters in my spare time. They are dangerous. Once, after one of my planes crashed near me, I picked it up without giving it a second thought and sliced my hand wide open on the still spinning front propeller.

I don't necessarily believe this is a technology that will result in fatalities, but certainly injuries, especially to children and animals.

On a less dangerous note; I fully expect some shenanigans from people shooting these things down to get free goods.

So your "worst case scenario" includes a complete lack of reasonable safety precautions that the FAA would mandate before this is approved AND damage inflicted by something with 8x the wingspan (not to mention differences in engine power)? You believe this is a reasonable comparison?

We could build UPS trucks that are two lanes wide and paint over their windshields, but we don't. Because that would be stupid. So stupid that comparing the risk involved isn't even worthy of discussion.

All delivery technologies result in injuries. That doesn't make them "not good ideas".

So your point is that it won't decapitate someone and instead slice their body/face to pieces?

This is not a toy helicopter.

This is a delivery vehicle equipped with the best collision detection technology Amazon can find, approved by some of the best profit-motivated, liability-averse lawyers in the world.

> ...approved by some of the best profit-motivated, liability-averse lawyers in the world.

You can be sure that on the other side of the equation, if and when a delivery drone causes damage to property or causes bodily harm or death, some of the best profit-motivated, liability-sniffing lawyers in the world will be eying the bank accounts of Amazon and its insurance carriers.

By the way: attorneys don't "approve" anything. They advise clients on risk and can try to help clients mitigate risk to the greatest extent possible based on the courses of action clients pursue. Companies do stupid things that create liabilities, some huge, all the time. The attorneys make just as much (if not more) cleaning up messes as they do trying to prevent them.

Amazon however, is not particularly profit motivated...

That wasn't a toy helicopter either.

Correct. In the same way, this isn't a toy rocket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rocket1034040.jpg