[HN Gopher] Amazon delivery drone strikes North Texas apartment,...
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Amazon delivery drone strikes North Texas apartment, causing minor
damage
Author : robotnikman
Score : 40 points
Date : 2026-02-08 20:22 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.expressnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.expressnews.com)
| robotnikman wrote:
| Other news sources:
|
| 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...
| cmiles8 wrote:
| 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.
| ecosystem wrote:
| 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)
| delecti wrote:
| People are more accepting when there's a person who can be
| punished. There's also the fact that society generally
| expects cars/trucks hitting things. A drone impact might be a
| more minor impact, but it's possible for it to hit things
| that are more shocking to the public if they get hit.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| I'm sure there's a surprisingly high frequency of
| "acceptable" collisions if the bar is matching truck-
| inflicted property damage and injuries. Much like with
| replacing human drivers with computers, though, merely
| matching the cost and harms of the existing system is far
| from enough. Entrenched systems benefit from familiarity with
| the associated costs and risks, and from any structures built
| to mitigate them. New solutions have to be much better to
| gain acceptance.
|
| Fortunately, automated systems can meet that higher threshold
| so long as we actually aim for it. If you aim for the lower
| "beats existing systems by some measures" bar then you make
| stupid decisions and tradeoffs like rushing to market or
| leaving out more capable sensors. We ought to try to make new
| technologies as good as possible. Sometimes the market will
| bet against that, but that's a tide that engineers should
| fight back against. Trucks kill too many people, and if
| drones kill half as many that's still unacceptable. We _can_
| do better.
| computomatic wrote:
| > merely matching the cost and harms of the existing system
| is far from enough
|
| The new system needs to be _better_ but that doesn't
| necessarily mean safer.
|
| For delivery, that could mean cheaper and faster and more
| convenient.
|
| Autonomous vehicles are a special case because those
| accidents tend to cause death and serious injury. As long
| as delivery drones can avoid killing multiple people per
| year, they are probably fine to compete on other metrics.
| doubled112 wrote:
| If Amazon handled it the right way, their drone smashing
| through your window could be a mere inconvenience.
|
| In comparison to the way their delivery drivers drive
| down my sidewalk, I can see the drone being a safety win.
| freejazz wrote:
| >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.
| sejje wrote:
| I would expect the result to be the same as running into
| anything else: drone and any payload crash into the ground.
|
| Drones are lightweight, they're not going to do much to heavy
| machinery. Basically the same as a brick wall.
|
| The real fear is propellers hitting a human. The result is
| not good at all.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Also drone and payload falling to the ground from any kind
| of height could cause serious injury or death if it falls
| on someone.
| coldcode wrote:
| Which is the argument against flying cars. Uncontrolled
| flying car crashes over populated areas could be
| catastrophic.
| ares623 wrote:
| Easy, don't walk near buildings then! /s
| DasIch wrote:
| They weigh 80-85lbs and travel at speeds of around 50mph.
|
| The impact would be quite serious, if they crash at speed
| but even falling on a car or a human would be quite
| serious, possibly deadly, even if the propellers don't
| spin.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I expect some kind of automatic drone parachute system to
| develop.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Zero? I think the expected number of collisions can be larger
| than zero. Jimmy Johns sandwich delivery by bicycle has
| resulted in more collisions than zero and that is arguably
| safe.
|
| You are setting an impossible standard.
| walt_grata wrote:
| Vibe steering and navigating
| nomel wrote:
| > This just hit a building
|
| 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).
| npilk wrote:
| As far as I can tell, Zipline are way out ahead in this space
| right now.
| rolph wrote:
| "Another clip shows the drone on the ground with smoke coming
| from it."
|
| if true, its a matter of repetition, and probability, until the
| time one of these crashes starts something on fire.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Already safer than delivery vans.
| piva00 wrote:
| Delivery vans don't start fires on the 5th floor, introducing
| novel risks for the same result usually is not very well
| accepted by the public.
|
| But also, I won't ever understand the fixation of the USA
| about having things delivered by drone, it's a really weird
| behaviour.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| "That's not very typical, I'd like to make that point."
| davidhyde wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
|
| Looks like they didn't meet the minimum crew requirement on
| this one.
| eichin wrote:
| Anyone else too news-aware and parsed "drone strike" as a verb
| the first time?
| hermannj314 wrote:
| The solution space of maximum engagement and easily
| misinterpreted headlines overlaps quite a bit.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| "delivery above recommended speed"
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| Yeah, "Amazon drone strikes North Texas" definitely evokes a
| different image.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
| netsharc wrote:
| Last paragraph:
|
| > 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.".
| delichon wrote:
| 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.
| csense wrote:
| 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.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _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.
| thelock85 wrote:
| The presence and operation of drones on one's personal
| property appears more corporatist in nature than democratic.
| nomel wrote:
| the current legal definition of property does not include
| the air above. it's what allows them, and airplanes, to fly
| over.
| thelock85 wrote:
| The top post is about property damage not flying over.
| This comment is in response to the idea that drone
| delivery is a democratically expressed need or want. I
| think it's a corporate need advancing capital over labor
| in the name of convenience. Perhaps people only care
| about convenience but I'm not sure that makes it
| democratic.
|
| Also I'm not a property rights lawyer but I'd contest the
| idea that you don't even own an inch or a foot or several
| feet above your property, otherwise it would be
| impossible to build up. Please share a source on your
| "current legal definition" either in North Texas
| municipality where drone crash occurred or otherwise.
| antonvs wrote:
| > democracy: live with the results
|
| The GP was suggesting that democratically, we could define "a
| legal means for property owners to keep drones off their
| property". Your comment is the one attempting to preempt
| democratic consensus.
| tartoran wrote:
| I think there should be a way for people to have some kind of
| control when it comes with drones. Imagine there's a air
| channel of commercial drones passing by your bedroom window,
| every 2-5 minutes. They're noisy and you lose sleep over it.
| You want no recourse?
| superb_dev wrote:
| Drone are noisy and invasive. I know I'd be upset if the
| neighbor boy was flying his camera drone around my property.
| Amazon doesn't get a pass just because they're a corporation.
| There is all kinds of passive data gathering that a these
| could be doing
| csense wrote:
| > no, there really doesn't need to be
|
| Bob the Bully doesn't like you. Whenever you leave your front
| door, Bob will fly his drone over your head while its onboard
| speaker continuously curses you out with TTS. Whenever you
| want to have a romantic moment with your boyfriend /
| girlfriend, Bob's drone will be watching through the nearest
| window.
|
| If you ask Bob to stop harassing you, he'll laugh and curse
| you out in person. If you sue Bob, after thousands in legal
| fees the court system will say "You're SoL; there's no law
| that says Bob can't do what he's doing." If involve the
| police, they'll say "We can't do anything because no illegal
| activity is occurring." If you shoot down the drone, you'll
| be sent to prison like the guy in the video.
|
| You only have one realistic option in this situation, "Just
| put up with it." This certainly seems like a bug in the law
| that ought to be patched.
| Spivak wrote:
| This would easily meet the bar for a harassment complaint.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's already highly illegal, it's called harassment and
| invasion of privacy and there are laws against it. Laws
| specifically against voyeurism, unlawful video
| surveillance, harassment and stalking, intrusion upon
| seclusion, nuisance...
| gretch wrote:
| > There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep
| drones off their property
|
| I agree. It should be the same one we use for helicopters and
| airplanes.
| Spivak wrote:
| If they fly low enough that I could hit them with a shotgun,
| they're on my property. This isn't true of planes and
| helicopters.
|
| These things aren't planes or helicopters and poised to be
| much more invasive and annoying, why people act like they are
| just like a passenger airplanes flying a literal mile
| overhead is baffling. But to that end if Amazon started
| making deliveries by landing a fucking helicopter in my yard
| on the regular I would also want them banned.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It is the same law,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations
|
| But drones are classified differently and the rules need to
| be updated and tightened up, particularly drones for
| commercial purposes.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _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.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Perhaps individual property rights should go up to that 500
| foot limit. Or at least _some_ limit. It doesn 't seem quite
| right that property rights end at ground level.
| esseph wrote:
| You probably didn't have rights to the minerals below
| ground level, either!
| mindslight wrote:
| How about we start recognizing that the occasional nuisance
| scaled up turns into real harm, and prohibit drones
| owned/operated by non-individuals from flying over anything
| that isn't a public way or a consensual waypoint?. This
| retains the ability for individual personal use and even
| innovation (with one's own skin in the game), while mostly
| heading off the perverse incentives of businesses creating
| externalities at scale and then ultimately enclosing the
| commons.
|
| In general our society desperately needs to stop denying this
| basic division, and burden individuals less while applying
| heavier regulations to corporations/LLCs - ie artificial
| legal entities created by government whose sine-qua-non is
| already large amounts of paperwork. For another example, most
| of the opposition to digital privacy regulation would become
| moot.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| How about drones only fly over public roads when they are
| below 500 feet?
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| > And do we really need orders in 60 minutes?
|
| 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.
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