Amazon Delivery Drone Crashes into Texas Apartment Building (yahoo.com) 61
"You can hear the hum of the drone," says a local newscaster, "but then the propellors come into contact with the building, chunks of the drone later seen falling down. The next video shows the drone on the ground, surrounded by smoke...
"Amazon tells us there was minimal damage to the apartment building, adding they are working with the appropriate people to handle any repairs." But there were people standing outside, notes the woman who filmed the crash, and the falling drone "could've hit them, and they would've hurt."
More from USA Today: Cesarina Johnson, who captured the collision from her window, told USA TODAY that the collision seemed to happen "almost immediately" after she began to record the drone in action... "The propellers on the thing were still moving, and you could smell it was starting to burn," Johnson told Fox 4 News. "And you see a few sparks in one of my videos. Luckily, nothing really caught on fire where it got, it escalated really crazy." According to the outlet, firefighters were called out of an abundance of caution, but the "drone never caught fire...."
Amazon employees can be seen surveying the scene in the clip. Johnson told the outlet that firefighters and Amazon workers worked together to clean up before the drone was loaded into a truck.
Another local news report points out Amazon only began drone delivery in the area late last year.
The San Antonio Express News points out that America's 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."
"Amazon tells us there was minimal damage to the apartment building, adding they are working with the appropriate people to handle any repairs." But there were people standing outside, notes the woman who filmed the crash, and the falling drone "could've hit them, and they would've hurt."
More from USA Today: Cesarina Johnson, who captured the collision from her window, told USA TODAY that the collision seemed to happen "almost immediately" after she began to record the drone in action... "The propellers on the thing were still moving, and you could smell it was starting to burn," Johnson told Fox 4 News. "And you see a few sparks in one of my videos. Luckily, nothing really caught on fire where it got, it escalated really crazy." According to the outlet, firefighters were called out of an abundance of caution, but the "drone never caught fire...."
Amazon employees can be seen surveying the scene in the clip. Johnson told the outlet that firefighters and Amazon workers worked together to clean up before the drone was loaded into a truck.
Another local news report points out Amazon only began drone delivery in the area late last year.
The San Antonio Express News points out that America's 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."
Amazon will pay out nothing you need to sue the DS (Score:2)
Amazon will pay out nothing you need to sue the DSP
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Re:Amazon will pay out nothing you need to sue the (Score:5, Insightful)
Just become a billionaire and you’ll be fine.
Re: Amazon will pay out nothing you need to sue th (Score:2)
Just become a billionaire and people will give you drones to crash into buildings for free!
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so the low wage worker does the hard time and has no funds to pay out and no one up chain takes an hit. with the victim being out of pocket.
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It's really worth reading the 450 comments on this video Why this crash matters to everyone that flies a drone [youtube.com] for a sense of how the recreational drone community is feeling about this crash.
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Re: Amazon will pay out nothing you need to sue th (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon is already working on the repairs to the building, that seems like the correct first step since no one was actually hurt in the incident... as for fines, OK, I'd love to hear the law/regulation that says when an autonomous drone hits a building, you have to pay a fine (or do jail time) - and no, if your personal drone hit a building and didn't hurt anyone you wouldn't go to jail, accidental damage to a building isn't a criminal offense
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Amazon is working on the repairs?
If they can't fly a drone without turning it into a weapon of mass destruction, I'm not entirely convinced I'd feel safe with them a thousand miles of fresh bricks and just-mixed mortar. Always assuming that that's what was delivered. The robots go to a specific coordinate in a warehouse, not a specific product, and there's plenty of bogus stuff sold via Amazon stores.
If I were in that building, I would be very very scared to hear Amazon was repairing it.
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Sorry...How many apartment buildings did the drone knock down again?
Re: Amazon will pay out nothing you need to sue t (Score:2)
If I were in that building, I would be very very scared to hear Amazon was repairing it.
Who said Amazon workers were repairing the building? They are paying the bill and got contractors on-site right away.
Tell me you didn't read even the summary without saying you didn't read the summary.
Re: Amazon will pay out nothing you need to sue t (Score:2)
If they can't fly a drone without turning it into a weapon of mass destruction
Hyperbole much?
They fly thousands of drones daily, and have for months. One drone hit one building and you race to call it 'mass destruction'?
Personally I think residential/commercial drone deliveries are a bad idea but no one asked me.
Looking forward to their first kill (Score:2, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time.
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call jeff bezos to the stand.
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That is pretty sick that you are looking forward to someone getting killed.
But if it does excite you so much, I suggest tracking Amazon / UPS / FedEx delivery truck fatalities instead. You'll get to enjoy hearing about a few fatalities every month.
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Cargo aircraft crash regularly, killing people in the aircraft and on the ground. Delivery vans get involved in accidents, sometimes fatal.
When evaluating drones, we need to compare them to other options. Are they more or less dangerous?
Re: Looking forward to their first kill (Score:3)
You miss the point... We must also evaluate the importance of that danger. A package without a plane or a truck isn't getting delivered at all. A package in a drone is getting delivered in one hour instead of four hours.
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No that's not what I said. I said I don't need additional danger to get my package a few hours earlier.
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Cargo aircraft crash regularly, killing people in the aircraft and on the ground. Delivery vans get involved in accidents, sometimes fatal.
When evaluating drones, we need to compare them to other options. Are they more or less dangerous?
There is a pilot in the cargo plane whose life is on the line though, so there is at least one person who has an existential stake in the vehicle's safe operation. Also man-rated vehicles are generally subject to stricter inspections.
When considering drones we also have to account for how ubiquitous they might become. If Amazon intends to use them them for a significant plurality of deliveries, then we are talking 10s or 100s of thousands of the things. At that scale, even a very low per annum crash rate
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A cargo plane can crash a maximum of once and can carry hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of packages. A drone carries one. Furthermore, a cargo plane will move from hub to hub, carrying cargo in each flight. A drone must go in both directions for that one package.
So whilst I technically agree with you, if an aircraft can carry N times as much as a drone, then the drone MUST be 2N times as reliable as an aircraft to be considered equal.
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Shhh! Shhh! /. is a logic-and-deep-thinking-free zone.
Customers fault (Score:2)
WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
Has become? (Score:2, Interesting)
There has never been any point in history, including pre-recorded history, during which humans acted in a fair and reasonable fashion as a group.
Those in power (whether their power be derived from wealth or political influence) are held to a different standard from everyone else. It has always been this way. It was this way when we were hunter-gatherers living in forests and caves. It was this way before we even qualified as humans.
This is not a quirk of culture or circumstance. This is a property of hu
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Re: WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
Now if I had a drone flying around, for whatever the purpose, and crashed it into someone's apartment building, I'm pretty sure that I'd be arrested and facing all matter of criminal charges. In fact, I could expect a raid by feds and I'd be looking down the barrel of an MP5.
No, you wouldn't, accidental property damage without injury to a person is not a criminal offense.
Intentional property damage is a crime, but this was not intentional.
Bodily injury is a crime, but no one was hurt.
If you lose control of your car (accidentally) and hit someone's home and do not cause bodily harm to anyone, you are responsible for the repairs, you aren't charged with a criminal offense, you don't go to jail, and your home will not be raided by federal agents.
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Now if I had a drone flying around, for whatever the purpose, and crashed it into someone's apartment building, I'm pretty sure that I'd be arrested and facing all matter of criminal charges. In fact, I could expect a raid by feds and I'd be looking down the barrel of an MP5.
No, you wouldn't, accidental property damage without injury to a person is not a criminal offense.
Intentional property damage is a crime, but this was not intentional.
Bodily injury is a crime, but no one was hurt.
If you lose control of your car (accidentally) and hit someone's home and do not cause bodily harm to anyone, you are responsible for the repairs, you aren't charged with a criminal offense, you don't go to jail, and your home will not be raided by federal agents.
But ... but ... drama? Emoting? My feels????
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True, but conditionally.
Remember the Firestone/Bridgestone tyre scandal, when the company got hauled into Senate hearings because SUVs kept rolling? Remember the Boeing scandal, when their aircraft would plunge out the sky? If a product is operated when known to be defective, your immunity in the case of accidents shrinks.
So it's going to depend on just how safe Amazon drones are. If they're normally safe and reliable, Amazon is safe. If, however, Amazon drones are well-known to lose control under normal an
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On what charges?
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I'm pretty sure that I'd be arrested and facing all matter of criminal charges. In fact, I could expect a raid by feds and I'd be looking down the barrel of an MP5.
Given this happens all the time and people don't typically get arrested or face criminal charges unless something goes really bad (like severe damage to property), I'm pretty sure you are very wrong. Even in the trigger happy gestapo run wild west of America.
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Now if I had a drone flying around, for whatever the purpose, and crashed it into someone's apartment building, I'm pretty sure that I'd be arrested and facing all matter of criminal charges. In fact, I could expect a raid by feds and I'd be looking down the barrel of an MP5. But because it's Big Tech(tm) it will get washed away. How degenerate this society has become.
The legal system was initially built to protect the owner class from the liabilities of living in a society that has an expendable class. It didn't "become" this way. It was created this way.
Sounds exactly like the time (Score:2)
a photographer flew a drone into a building at my cousins wedding, just on a smaller scale.
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Re: Sounds exactly like the time (Score:2)
Why was the sock wet?
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Lemon juice.
Guess what hurts more than getting hit by a drone? (Score:2)
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Would you rather be hit by 50 drone sized trucks, or one truck sized drone?
Re:Guess what hurts more than getting hit by a dro (Score:5, Interesting)
I take it you've never been hit by a drone. A friend of mine has (his own). He spent 2 days in hospital and got a LOT of stitches. Especially drones designed to carry weight typically have very strong blades. I'm also reminded of the story we ran here a decade ago about a guy who killed himself while doing trick flights with his drone after it hit him in the face and nearly took his head right off. Bled out with a crowd watching.
This isn't an either or situation. Drones haven't replaced drivers. Amazon has record number of vehicles on the road.
Yeah, these aren't small hobbiest drones. (Score:4, Insightful)
This drone (an MK30) is 78 pounds, and about 6 feet diameter. They could easily kill a person if they hit a them. I think this is the fourth time I've read about their drones crashing, and all the cases seemed reasonably avoidable. They are currently operating under a special FAA license that exempts them from several rules that normal drone operators have to follow, like not requiring visual line of site. Given their safety record so far, I think that license should be revoked, and they can go back to a normal commercial license, until they have proven their operations to be safe again.
Re: In Texas (Score:3)
I can - you'd be responsible for fixing the damage, and your drone operation would be examined to establish if you were following all relevant rules and regulations.
It really isn't hard to imagine what would happen - it's just about the same process as if you hit an apartment building with your car...
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There's your problem (Score:2)
If you didn't build that apartment building, there wouldn't have been the crash. Duh.
Re: If I crashed a done into a building (Score:2)
On what charge? Seriously, this makes no sense.
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Elderly people drive into buildings all the time. Nothing happens besides their insurance premium going up.
The governor... (Score:1)
And then ... (Score:1)
news priorities (Score:2)
I wonder how many cars ran into buildings that same day? or that week, or that month?
The only reason we hear about this is it's novel.
It's like comparing airplane crashes with car crashes. Frequency of occurrence: 1:10,000. Frequency of media coverage: 10,000:1
It's impossible to tell how unusual something is baed on whether or not it made the 6:00 news.
Re: news priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem flew right over your head (pun intended). Vehicles are at full peak use so what you see today is what you you get. Maybe one accident per billion packages delivered or whatever. The drones on the other hand are a growing technology. If there are hundreds in the air now there will be thousands one day. So it causes one to think.. if it happens today than it will happen at least ten times more once it gets fully ramped up. Perhaps people were lucky in escaping injury and damage this time but will they stay as lucky as this happens more and more?
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Like this turkey?
https://www.yoursourceone.com/... [yoursourceone.com]
Wait. things can fall out of the sky? (Score:2)
And the blame lies.... (Score:3)
Richardson, Texas - The Trump administration along with Amazon and Jeff Bezos hereby issues this public indictment regarding the malicious takedown of an Amazon deliver device earlier today. Evidence confirms that the incident was not a technical malfunction, but a coordinated act of Electronic Terrorism and Digital Sabotage perpetrated by an unidentified hostile actor.
While performing a safe, lawful delivery, an airborne Amazon delivery unit was targeted by a high-intensity, illegal electronic transmission. The perpetrator, posing as an apartment resident, utilized a mobile device to broadcast a malicious "Kill-Code" packet disguised as standard cellular data. This unauthorized signal overrode the drone’s sovereign flight protocols, forcing a kinetic collision with the perpetrator's residence.
Formal Allegations & Charges The FBI, in coordination with local and private security enforcement, is pursuing the maximum legal penalties for the following crimes:
Direct Warning to the Public "The individual observed filming the unit was not a witness; they were an operative conducting battlefield reconnaissance," stated Ditsi Noem, head of Boneland Security for the Trump organization. "The 'application' used was a weaponized hacking tool. We will not allow the infrastructure of commerce to be held hostage by digital vigilantes. We are currently utilizing facial recognition and signal-trace metadata to locate this individual for immediate detainment."
President Trump has invoked the Emergency Commercial Continuity Act, granting national FBI and HSA security teams the authority to seize any mobile devices found to be emitting suspicious signals within proximity of delivery vehicles or residences. Any individual found in possession of the specific "crash-trigger" software will be prosecuted as an accomplice to terrorism.
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Ooooh, this should be interesting.
Trump, et al, don't consider proof to be all that important, all that matters is publicity, headlines, and transfer of more power to Trump personally.
The courts will likely take a very different view. Unless hard evidence (something Trump has never been able to supply in any court case, either instigated by him or against him), terrorism charges won't survive. But, of course, Trump isn't interested in winning cases like this, he's interested in playing victim and demanding