[crooked-v]

The actual harm from the drone's wasted energy is pretty negligible aside from the waste heat itself, though, as compared to the many, many side effects of road vehicles of any kind (for example, just starting with the air pollution from tire particles).

Of course, that equation changes a bit once there are enough drones that noise pollution and collisions or other incidents become a real issue.

[algas]

Noise pollution and collisions are a much, much larger problem with cars, since they're constrained to two dimensions while drones can use three. Plus, cars tend to kill people when they collide with each other (or with pedestrians), and drones would not. Hopefully they will all use engineered quiet propellers (such as Zipline uses) and electric engines (similarly).

[fragmede]

> Plus, cars tend to kill people... and drones would not.

I think this is an good move by the FAA, but I also think that if one of these airplanes flew right into my head at full speed, I'd die.

[bombcar]

People are ingenious at getting killed, and birds can do it so eventually if we have enough drones someone will die to one.

However, much mini deliveries could be done with vehicles smaller than a full size car - and places where it is common you see lots of mopeds and similar.

People still can die to them.

[brandensilva]

It seems like a drone falling out of the sky could still kill people. It just seems less likely to us because there aren't as many right now to worry about like cars.

I like these devices for use for medical supplies but do worry how polluted the skies could become when multiple companies are flying these things for standard packages.