Safety’s Off
In response to Pizza from the Sky: New Zealand Tests Drone Delivery; What About Bombs? reader John emailed a link about a 65 year-old woman blasting a drone from the sky.
Let’s also take a look at a comment from a reader who claimed I was fearmongering about drone delivery of bombs.
Blasted to Smithereens
Ars Technica reports Woman shoots drone: “It hovered for a second and I blasted it to smithereens.”
With a single shotgun blast, a 65-year-old woman in rural northern Virginia recently shot down a drone flying over her property.
The woman, Jennifer Youngman, has lived in The Plains, Virginia, since 1990. The Fauquier Times first reported the June 2016 incident late last week. It marks the third such shooting that Ars has reported on in the last 15 months—last year, similar drone shootings took place in Kentucky and California.
Youngman told Ars that she had just returned from church one Sunday morning and was cleaning her two shotguns—a .410 and a .20 gauge—on her porch. She had a clear view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and neighbor Robert Duvall’s property (yes, the same Robert Duvall from The Godfather). Youngman had seen two men set up a card table on what she described as a “turnaround place” on a country road adjacent to her house.
“I go on minding my business, working on my .410 shotgun and the next thing I know I hear ‘bzzzzz,’” she said. “This thing is going down through the field, and they’re buzzing like you would scaring the cows.”
Youngman explained that she grew up hunting and fishing in Virginia, and she was well-practiced at skeet and deer shooting.
“This drone disappeared over the trees and I was cleaning away, there must have been a five- or six-minute lapse, and I heard the ‘bzzzzz,’” she said, noting that she specifically used 7.5 birdshot. “I loaded my shotgun and took the safety off, and this thing came flying over my trees. I don’t know if they lost command or if they didn’t have good command, but the wind had picked up. It came over my airspace, 25 or 30 feet above my trees, and hovered for a second. I blasted it to smithereens.”
When the men began to walk towards her, she told them squarely: “The police are up here in The Plains and they are on their way and you need to leave.”
Gray Zone
For now, American law does not recognize the concept of aerial trespass. But as the consumer drone age has taken flight, legal scholars have increasingly wondered about this situation. The best case-law on the issue dates back to 1946, long before inexpensive consumer drones were technically feasible. That year, the Supreme Court ruled in a case known as United States v. Causby that a farmer in North Carolina could assert property rights up to 83 feet in the air.
In that case, American military aircraft were flying above his farm, disturbing his sleep and upsetting his chickens. As such, the court found he was owed compensation. However, the same decision also specifically mentioned a “minimum safe altitude of flight” at 500 feet—leaving the zone between 83 and 500 feet as a legal gray area. “The landowner owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land,” the court concluded.
Youngman said she believed in 2nd Amendment rights and also was irritated that people would try to disturb Duvall.
“The man is a national treasure and they should leave him the f**k alone,” she said.
Fear Mongering?
In my article, I posted a video of 4.5 pounds of explosives blowing up a bus.
The pizza drone can deliver 5.5 pounds.
Reader David commented …
Are you suggesting that if there is a potential terrorist application for a new technology, then that’s a fear-mongering argument for not developing it, or trying to ban it, or otherwise imposing some regulatory regime? If so, say so. If not, then please spare us the exploding bus scare tactic.
I’m a fairly regular reader, and I have to say this type of thing should be beneath you, unless I completely misunderstand your purpose with respect to showing an exploding bus without actually making a point. ….
He didn’t actually make a point that could be debated. People see the exploding bus and think, “this will empower terrorists to new heights of horror. We need to regulate the hell out of it.”
I’m actually a bit surprised, because Mish in general is no friend of over-regulation. He must know that just showing a video like that without being clear what his intention is in doing so has the effect scaring people and providing a rationale for stifling a technology with regulation.
Elevatorman replied …
“I thought Mish made that clear with the bus video. When I read they can carry over 5 pounds, I wondered how many grenades that would be. It’s not scare mongering. It’s called thinking.”
Mish Reply
Technologically speaking drone delivery is feasible now. But drones are also an easy way to deliver bombs. I fail to see how regulation can possibly fix that.
Dear terrorists “please register your drones” is not likely to work.
I would like to believe there is an answer, but I fail to see one.
For comparison purposes, self driving cars are easy. Cars will have to stick to roads. Technology can and will easily overcome snow, fog, etc.
Drones offer a near perfect bomb delivery prospect, that I cannot work out a way around.
I certainly understand the benefits of drone delivery. Millions of pizza delivery jobs can easily vanish in a second. And they might.
If the economic benefit of drone delivery exceeds potential terrorist costs, they will happen. If not, then despite obvious feasibility, drone will not happen or will be reversed if it does.
Complex Issues
Reader David is correct in one assertion. I am not a fan of regulation in general.
But I am in favor of property rights. Many things are not very clear. What are reasonable boundaries? And what about safety?
Self-driving vehicles will make us safer. Unlike human drivers, autonomous vehicles don’t get drunk, don’t drive when they are half asleep, don’t speed, don’t tailgate, and don’t run red lights. They also stick to roads.
Will drones improve safety? The answer has to be a resounding “no”.
Questions?
- Do we really want drones capable of blowing up a bus flying within miles of the White House?
- Within miles of Madison, the capital of Wisconsin?
- Within miles of Springfield, the capital of Illinois?
- Within miles of the Sears Tower?
- Within miles of the Brooklyn Bridge?
Drone delivery is conceptually easier than self driving cars. In practice, there are far more concerns.
If hundreds or thousands of these things are flying all over the place, how do you control where they go?
Do we need anti-drone drones to shoot down unauthorized drones? If we do, how long will that take?
Drone pizza delivery is conceptually easier than self-driving cars. The technology exists right now.
In practice, it’s far easier for millions of cars to navigate roads of a known path than it will be to monitor millions of drones, all potentially capable of dropping a bomb on the White House at any second.
By the way, the FAA Expects 600,000 Commercial Drones In The Air Within A Year.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
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The Supreme Court has ruled that people can assert property rights up to 83 feet in the air.
“The end of one of the runways of the airport was 2,220 feet from Respondents’ property, and the glide path passed over the property at 83 feet, which is 67 feet above the house, 63 feet above the barn, and 18 feet above the highest tree”.
What is the “glide path” of a drone? Geeze, as crooked as our government is today, one wouldn’t be that optomistic. Circumstances are quite a bit different too.
http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/property/property-law-keyed-to-cribbet/interests-in-land-of-another-and-in-natural-resources-affecting-anothers-land/united-states-v-causby/
Do we really want drones capable of blowing up a bus flying within miles of the White House?
If there is a bus flying within miles of the white house it would be lowering traffic and likely be in air-lanes with those flying cars everyone was predicting. Of course if it looked threatening.
There will be few if any self-driving pizza deliveries. 1. Some must go up (unmapped) driveways. 2. While waiting for the person who ordered, someone else can steal the Pizza(s). 3. The Pizza delivery business is cheap enough – find a minimum wage kid with a beater car instead of a $50k piece of tech. 4. There are costs to have different ways of delivering and Dominoes delivery won’t work here in the rural area unless you have self-driving 4x4s and forest service roads mapped.
One place not yet suggested is NYC, but they have a strong regulation to keep taxi badges high. But owning a car is so onerous few do and many would do self-driving over the subway in many situations.
Ah TZ-
” But owning a car is so onerous few do and many would do self-driving over the subway in many situations.”
If you think NYC is only Manhattan, your right. Here in Queens, though; or anywhere in the outer boroughs; a LOT of us own cars. You must be very unfamiliar with NY traffic. :-)) I may be just an Ed, but I’ve lived here all my life, and every one of my neighbors has at least one vehicle. Try getting around outside Manhattan at night (or many areas any time) by public transport. It can be a horror. If you think ownership costs are too much, try paying cab fare all the time.
Less interested in self driving cars as I am self parking cars. To be able to jump out and have it go park at a remote lot a mile away would be a blessing in big cities. Personally I enjoy driving. Its called living. Technically we could have machines prepare our food, automated bathing and clothing. What exactly are we supposed to do with our lives to derive any sense of skill or accomplishment? Or do we just buy THAT online and have it delivered by Amazon drone too?
“Do we really want drones capable of blowing up a bus flying within miles of the White House”?
Yaknow, these days it I wouldn’t complain a bit.
Yes sir!
Pizza places don’t deliver in rural areas now, and the in town areas they fo deliver in are very well-mapped. For that matter, I live in extremely rural Montana, 10 miles off-grid, 10 miles up a private one lane dirt road that doesn’t even have a street sign to mark it. And google maps can find my place. Those Forest Circus roads are mapped, trust me.
“When the men began to walk towards her…”
It is not unreasonable to assume that a drone hovering over your property is a threat, especially if it’s close enough to hit with a shotgun, sling shot or bow and arrow. People who fly drones need to understand that. If these guys had flown the drone briefly over the woman’s property, without hovering, it would have been less of a threat and more difficult to hit.
I’m wid u, Mish! I’m particularly concerned at what happens when a million radicalized unemployed pizza deliverymen figure out that the only way to get their jobs back is to sabotage the whole drone-delivery system. What better way to do so than pizza bombs. Lose a few buses or White Houses to pizza drones and soon there’ll be full employment for pizzamen in America.
Simple solution. Just make drones free game. If you can shoot it down you are free to do so. Quality drones are not cheap and most will not be that happy to lose one. And if one looks like it might be carrying a bomb…..well, don’t they all?
As far a pizza delivery, with powerful fan blades blowing down on it, won’t it be stone cold when it arrives…or is it just a summer thing? And shooting it down will have even greater rewards.
I totally agree. Shotguns typically aren’t effective beyond about 65 yards so I like your “if you can shoot it down you are free to do so” policy. That works great for us country bumpkins shooting over field or forest, city slickers would have to be responsible for wherever your shot lands. My protected airspace, therefore, should be moved from 83 feet to a minimum of 65 yards. Otherwise, drones should stick to flying over public roads so they don’t violate my airspace.
As a bonus you get to keep the pizza. Now try training your Labrador retriever to bring it back to you gently and without eating it.
Name suggestion for delivery feature: Pull!™
I have underground utilities in my area. The original utilities were buried 42+ inches underground, right at the frost line, within a 6 foot wide easement cutting through the centers of the reap lot.. Later came the internet cables, which were kind of tucked in the ground by cheap labor with a poor sense of direction. I have lots of gardens in the back and have hit the cables with a shovel way outside the prescribed easement. My new rule… If I can get it with a rototiller, it’s mine.
Does anyone else agree with me that driverless cars and unmanned drone-type aircraft should be outlawed? Noone has asked me, my family or friends if we’ld like to drive on roads with driverless cars and trucks, or, have our skies invaded with this dangerous buzzing crap. Sheeeeesh.
To be fair, you didn’t ask the railroads if you could drive across their tracks but you do it all the time and they were there first.
5 pounds is not that much, try 20 or 30
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/huge-high-payload-hexacopter
http://www.uavfactory.com/product/46 long distance.
All the circuitry for self contained flight is easily available, and I imagine accurate targetting not hard either.
700 pounds with http://www.auavt.com/
A cheap 30 pounds
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/huge-high-payload-hexacopter
Lol… It’s a flying Star of David @ 0.16 seconds. Gonna drop that thing on the Palestinians?
Can it be allowed for specific applications like bombing enemies, ferreting out terrorists, pipeline inspection etc.?
God bless that senior citizen. I suspect she felt threatened and was in fear of the drone harming her livestock. There was nothing in the article that indicated she was cited or arrested. So I have to assume that she was within the boundaries of the law. Give her a medal. If she’s ever in town I would be honored to buy her dinner.
If you read Zerohedge every day, you might have caught this David Seaman youtube video from one of their articles today. Yaknow, I dig for news at least 3 hours a day since I quit trading last year, and I’ve run into bunches of alarming news, but this video really stopped me in my tracks. It’s gotten this bad? Really? Mark Scott used to quote Thomas Jefferson every day on the radio, “I love my country, but I fear my government” So it all comes down to stuff like this now?:
I’m not a journalist. Never have been. But I read the news to stay current on what’s going on in my city, state and nation. It’s obvious to me that the media is rigged on so many levels. Worse than I’ve ever seen it before. I get more objective coverage from RT than from the US mainstream media. Very sad.
Of course, Huffington is not mainstream. Quite honestly I’ve never expected objectivity from their news reporters. It is what it is.
I’m a practical person. For any ethical paid journalist who enjoys collecting a paycheck and eating it’s probably best to play the game until you free yourself from what some may consider to be censorship of full disclosure.
Journalism used to be a very noble and honorable profession. All parents who have children who wish to become journalists should sit them down and tell them the facts of life before they take the leap. IMO it’s just as important as sitting them down at puberty and discussing the birds and the bees. If not, either omission could get them in lots of trouble.
This is 2016. We must adapt accordingly.
You wanna know what scares me to death?
The hundreds of thousands of brainwashed millennials being herded into “journalism” – a dead profession – in exchange for their tuition$. These kids know nothing. They understand nothing. But they are convinced that their ‘journalism’ will change the world… *shudder*.
Oh, btw, I read over at 0-Hedge that the 49’er QB Kaepernick who refused to stand for the National Anthem said some very derogatory things about Hillary and, in part, was his justification for refusing to stand.
Every word about Hillary was censored by the mainstream media.
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…….
F-bomb from Seaman (@4:46) lends some authenticity.
The depths of depravity at HuffPo sink to ever new lows…
I’m sure “terrorists” will respect any legislation we pass. Kind of like criminals and gun laws. The laws will be used against US.
Sounds like something my aunt would do. She won a hog calling contest at the county fair.
The answer is that drones will be confined to remaining over roads and rivers and such. The maps they use will block out the private property areas. Perhaps using zoning maps as a source.
It will slow them down a bit, but it’s a safe compromise, and still be faster and cheaper than by car.
Are hang gliders and parachuting persons bailing out and drifting over your property also fair game for the shotgun? Same property rights and trespass issues, I presume. Pizza drones would run into trespass issues, too, on a regular basis in many areas. I am sure teenage hackers would break from hacking Pentagon computers to the more immediate gratification of diverting pizza drones to their property for capture as “spoils.”
As to drones and the White House, that is a very interesting question. The drone-killer-in-chief is lucky he lives so far from Afghanistan etc., so the relatives of those killed cannot easily get revenge (an eye for an eye, a drone for a drone). All the more reason to scrutinize immigration from those areas subjected to USA bombs and drone attacks.
Perhaps those wedding parties in Afghanistan should have trained their women to use shotguns and protect themselves from White House and CIA drones; lack of self-defense proved fatal. Drones sound like more fodder for firearms ownership, as if more was needed. Perhaps there will be a booming homeowner market for anti-aircraft guns and ground-to-air missiles. Instead of supplying foreign mercenaries in Syria and elsewhere, the USA domestic market might be developed. More fodder for the Supreme Court, deciding possession of anti-aircraft guns and missiles. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shot down over Ukraine could be a harbinger of things to come, as the technology gets cheaper and more compact. Of course, nukes and viruses and lots of other things might wipe us out in the meantime.
I had a hot air balloon drop in my field where a crop was growing once. I let them collect the passengers & equipment, expecting compensation. Nope. They offered me a free balloon ride (no thanks). Next time I’ll just shoot the balloon if it’s under 83 feet. I suppose I should have expected irresponsible behavior from irresponsible balloonists who have no idea where the thing will end up landing.
I wonder how that 83 feet limit is interpreted. Would it be from the bottom or top or middle of the balloon? A lawyer’s litigation dream.
Dear Mish
I do not have a shotgun but I have always said I would be happy to shoot at any drone hovering over my property. I have experienced drones taking pictures and videos of me and other people and the feeling of breach of privacy is disturbing.
I think people will rebel against the daily use of this technology, well before it becomes a security hazard.
Regards, Alessandro.
good luck registering/regulating drones… the genie is out of the bottle. expect many, many more drone vs. shotgun stories in the years to come.
drone delivery will happen before autonomous vehicles. both will eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs… perhaps millions of jobs.
A majority of voters would have to support pizza delivery drones before laws would be changed to allow them. Might happen when they become sufficiently reliable, and tracking technology improves enough so that legitimate delivery drones can be separated from rogue drones.
For now, many voters are a bit wary.
Let us recognize that drones do not kill people, rather people kill people, before we rush to regulate and irresponsibly limit the options available to n’er do wells and others. We need a National Drone Association to lobby against all restrictions now. Those who want to restrict drones can then confine themselves to wringing their hands and saying “something must be done”.
Once again, Dr Merkel is in the vanguard. The youtube link is to a video of her close encounter with a drone – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-5MDqGGon8 .
This video is faked, but it won’t be long before the drones shoot back:
https://youtu.be/SNPJMk2fgJU
So the terrorists are going to wait for drones instead of you know finding some other way to deliver 5 pounds of explosive!!!! what utter crap. yes it is fear mongering. The real story is the Journo getting censored over Killary and not nonsense about imaginary terrorists bombing buses with pizza drones.
The only reason they are limiting drones is because they can carry cameras. Nothing more. I used to fly remote control airplanes and they do not require a damn license.
Maybe all those who have purchased guns recently will get their chance to practice their marksmanship, but also exercise their property rights.
Drone deliveries do improve safety by removing vehicles from the road.
They also reduce congestion.
Seems silly to debate the risk of using drones to deliver bombs when we live in a country where known violent criminals can buy military grade guns. We’re already unsafe. Drones can’t change that. They can reduce the risk to the assaulter, but terrorist organizations don’t seem to have much trouble finding suicide bombers.
I can see how the debate might be interesting in war zones – rebel forces using them as a less expensive and more accurate alternative to RPGs.
There is probably a good way to use them to steal money. Maybe something like a dummy wifi hotspot that can steal your passwords if you let it.
Privacy and safety concerns are niche issues. Drone will only be a real problem if someone can figure out how to use them illegally to make money.
You should do more research before commenting. When has ANY citizen used a fully automatic “military grade” weapon to kill an innocent person? Semi auto weapons are NOT military grade for the most part, and the few that do are not any more lethal than the cheapest weapon you can buy. Full auto weapons are fully licensed and VERY expensive for a private citizen to own. Your threats are misplaced as the only real threat from military weapons likely comes from a militarized police force, and that (at this point) is minimal.
For me, the whole discussion about drones and bombing and threats is centered around our personal liberties in contrast to safety issues. As technology improves, weapons will emerge of increasing potency, so at some point we will have to decide if we are to live in a completely authoritarian state or if we are going to live with risk….risk I might point out that has ALWAYS been with us. The noise over gun control is a perfect example where actual STATISTICS are ignored in favor of the sensational.
If the threat of death as retribution for murder is insufficient a deterrent to prevent it, then WHAT LAW can be created to protect us from anything? Sure it makes sense to restrict weapons of any type…including automobiles, from the hands of the insane. It also makes sense to resist extending our constitutional protections to non citizens…like preventing them from coming here in the first place if they are suspect of ill intent. But for we citizens, we will have to live with the fact that our society is actively breeding discontent and violence within our own borders (deliberately I think). We will have to get used to the idea that in some cases, people really are out to get you. To surrender our liberties…especially the ones you might not think all tat important, will be far more destructive. We should be promoting shared values and common interests rather than divisive notions that advance violence. You have to WANT to kill someone. Rather than focusing on disarming them physically, we should be disarming people mentally.
“…if someone can figure out how to use them illegally to make money.”
You mean like transporting cash and delivering drugs? Done.
No way it is viable to transport pizza through the air in the open environment over a long distance without significant insulated housings to keep them warm and dry. Maybe in a very high density urban environment, but not elsewhere. It is a silly idea.
I seriously believe people underestimate the threat from drones. Besides fixed targets (buildings, infrastructure), drones can also go after moving targets. If you think terrorism is bad today, we will be defenseless against determined terrorists in a few years time. Human beings are doomed.
1. Drones or not it takes less energy to move stuff on the ground than through the air. It will always be easier to load hundreds of pounds into a car than into a drone, therefore self-driving cars do lower the cost of mass terrorism. Today a terrorist who wants to use a car or truck based bomb has to either be willing to kill themselves (ISIS terrorists) or have a getaway plan (Tim McVeigh, the attempted Times Square bomber from a few years back). A self driving car can be packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives, a big rig truck can be packed with tons. Your argument is that cars/trucks are limited by software to driving only on valid roads and have more regulatory burdens (you have to register them etc.)
a. Enough explosive and you can destroy what you want even if you can’t drive right into it.
b. It’s almost certain that self-driving software will be cracked and hackers will be able to bypass safety controls.
2. Saving grace here, terrorism is actually amazingly low and rare. A lot of terrorism can be pulled off using 1970’s technology or 70’s technology with just some basic modern tech added on (for example, a pipe bomb with a cell phone attached as a trigger). Consider the Unabomber or old-school mafia style car bombs. The ‘tech’ is already out there to do a lot of terrorism if your targets are not high profile buildings and you are willing to settle for something not as dramatic as 9/11. Why don’t we see more?
a. It’s easy to under estimate just how much we are under surveillance. The Boston Marathon bombers, for example, demonstrated that when something happens we can achieve retrieve near perfect 24-7 video footage of many major streets retracing what happened and who did it. Cell phones are creating data trails of us 24-7. Even keeping your phone off generates a data trail (phones that only turn on for a brief period can be combined with cam recordings, credit cards and other records to figure out who is trying to fly under the radar). The US postal service photographs every piece of mail it processes and keeps a record f it. While we are not at a ‘minority report’ condition where the gov’t can figure out who is going to go terrorist ahead of time, it can often quickly backtrack and take down someone soon after an incident.
b. There’s just not that much terrorism period. Despite ISIS and the Middle East, the world has turned less violent over the last generation. Just recently the Columbian treaty ended the last actual war going on in the America’s. The entire Western hemisphere is free of major armed conflict for the first time in modern history. Lone wolf shooters stand out as an exception only to a much larger trend that many people aren’t even aware of because it is so gradual.
I think one added threat of technology is the remote capability as you point out, but I think there is a mental aspect to this as I think it is easier to kill with a gun than a knife, a knife easier than a rock. The more remote, the less real and we have been training people for decades now to kill remotely through fictional, yet increasingly realistic video games. Although we have seen studies that seem to indicate that these games do not demonstrably increase violence in users, these same users have not been enabled with truly lethal tools to do this killing remotely until now. What we do know is virtually all publicized murders have been carried out by mentally unstable or ideologically indoctrinated (or both) individuals. In the past we might have only need be concerned about the full blown insane, but with new technology, the bar has been lowered and I believe we will see the less obvious crazies pursuing these remote devices. Regardless, it is not a weapons or technology problem, it is a MENTAL problem that our politically correct society REFUSES to address. We have more people walking our streets taking drugs for mental disorders ever in history, and even disregarding the number of diagnosed, we must consider all of the unknown “unintended consequences” these drugs pose.
So let’s run out and buy our emotionally challenged child a drone to play with, along with some nice murderous video games and see what happens.
I’m not sure that a drone is easier for someone with a mental problem to use to kill someone….esp. if it involves hacking it attach a weapon or explosive, getting an explosive etc.
In terms of someone who just wants to kill isn’t it easier to just run someone over with a car? There’s cars all over the place yet even mentally ill mass shooters seem to abide by traffic safety when they drive themselves to shootings!
I wonder which city state will experience the first Uber self driving vehicle bomb sporting a boom box playing the prerecorded public address announcement just before detonation: Allahu Akbar! BANG! Detroit?
Thank you for responding, Mish. It is indeed a complex issue. I think what you’ve said here represents your thinking much better than the exploding bus video. And you make a good point about an important difference between drones and self driving cars and identifying some important things to think about here in the early stages. Self driving cars will make us safer, whereas drones may do the opposite, at least insofar as can be foreseen now. Even so, I’m concerned over the regulatory backlash.
Dear MIsh,
Why are you concerned about the ***** house, what about your house, my house, etc..???
I do beg to differ. USA has a good system for private flights including private jets and leisure ones. We need to create a system but it can be self funded and self regulated.
Today helicopters pick people at random spots but pre-scheduled, I would take that system as a start to plan for 1000x volume.
Actually the FAA has pre-approval authority over landing zones for helicopters (with exceptions for law enforcement and medical responders). Even when a TV station’s news ‘copter brings the weatherman to a school science day event, it’s got government approval.
I can understand self-driving trucks/big-rigs – delivery time is fungible… an extra hour/day doesn’t really impact the economics of the heavy/large over-ther-road transport equation, and obviously the driverless rig is/will be cheaper to operate.
However, autonomous taxicabs/Uber make very little sense to me… they will NEVER be quicker/faster than a human driver (who is willing to cut corners/take risks). This difference DOES impact the economics of the the ride/transport equation…
How many taxi passengers are going to voluntarily take the slower taxi ride? Not many. I know I won’t. Investors/pundits should take a closer look at the need/bargain that is confronted by the DIFFERENT applications of autonomous driving… some applications make perfect sense, but others do not.
City streets are wildly different from open highways. There are tooo many variables & liabilities on city streets for an autonomous taxi… a human driver is & will remain faster/quicker in urban environments where most taxi business is applied. Faster/quicker is the reason people take taxi cabs in the first place. A slower competitor will struggle regardless of lower costs/price.
Watch the driverless Uber experiment in Pgh closely… I predict that Uber/taxi operations will conclude that driverless cabs are generally NOT economically viable, because driverless cabs will not consistently resolve the primary need of the customers – the fastest/quickest ride possible. Fun experiment, but not economically viable, imo.
Sounds like something Granny from “Beverly Hillbillies” would do.
That’s exactly what I was thinking!
Drones will “make us safer” much more efficiently than self driving cars ever will. Simply be reducing the number of trips that need to be taken by car. Having an army of oldsters hop into their ever more gargantuan SUVs to pick up a 5 ounce pack of meds at the pharmacy, instead of having it drone dropped at their place, is hardly neutral wrt safety.
As far as bombs, The occupants of the White House can already arrange to have yours and my house bombed on a minute’s notice. Even if You or I live halfway around the world. Increasing the opportunities for reciprocity, can only be a good thing. In power relationships, symmetry is a prerequisite for both equality and freedom. If you don’t want to be blown up, don’t behave in a way that unduly risks annoying others enough to make them willing to waste a drone on you. Armed societies being polite ones, and all that.
Superman’s drone against Lex Luthor’s hacked self-driving car carrying 5 tons of Kryptonite. Who wins?
How much low tech would it take for someone to un-load a box of 12 gauge shot shells for the powder, add a few boxes of 16 penny nails and a rudimentary timer, attach it to a hobby shop drone and have fun with an outdoor sporting event or county fair? It wouldn’t even have to be a terrorist. How about the psycho dad who is mad at his kids Little League coach for benching the tyke?