Royal Mail mulls drones for rural deliveries The Royal Mail's chief exec has envisioned a future with drone deliveries and driverless vans. Jumping enthusiastically onto the airborne parcel bandwagon, Moya Greene told the CBI's annual conference she'd "love to see" UAVs taking on rural delivery services to "more remote places where you don’t have to deliver too much". …
"and just how is the drone or driverless truck going to post a letter through a letterbox?"
Given that most deliveries apparently consist of throwing a package on the floor, outside, in the rain, in full view of a public footpath, with no attempt to knock on the door or leave any notification that a delivery has been made, I don't see how drones could possibly make things any worse. I guess it could go out of control, smash through my window and set the house on fire, but at least then they'd have actually done their fucking job and delivered the thing.
"...throwing a package on the floor, outside, in the rain, in full view of a public footpath..."
You k now, some of you people seem to live in some really shitty places with really shitty delivery services. Maybe I just have exceptional levels of charm which engenders the best in people but I've only had one single problem with a delivery and that was Yodel. They held up a telly for 3 days in a depot on the other side of the UK for some unknown reason despite having been paid for a next day delivery.
The local posty is very accommodating and knows which neighbours are "safe" to leave parcels with. If we aren't in and no one can take it in or needs signing for we always get a card through the door and pick it next day down at the local office.
Maybe the problems are caused by living in the big cities where everyone always seems to be in such a hurry all the time and being a postman is seen as a menial short term job instead of job to be done well. Maybe the prime cause is massively expensive housing so the lower paid workers who are needed can't afford to live there and desperately need to move on and up. My little 3 bed house would easily be worth 10x or more in certain parts of London.
"Maybe the problems are caused by living in the big cities where everyone always seems to be in such a hurry all the time and being a postman is seen as a menial short term job instead of job to be done well. Maybe the prime cause is massively expensive housing so the lower paid workers who are needed can't afford to live there and desperately need to move on and up. My little 3 bed house would easily be worth 10x or more in certain parts of London."
Given that I live in a small rural town, it seems unlikely London is to blame. In fact, when I did live in a big city (Birmingham rather than London), I had far fewer problems with deliveries. Although most likely because anything left outside would be stolen within 30 seconds so even the worst delivery companies weren't stupid enough to try it. As for the "local posty", that's probably a large part of the problem - parcels are generally not delivered by the local posty.
The other main part of the problem is that none of them give a fuck because as far as they're concerned we're not their customers, the people paying for the delivery are. You can't complain about their service and you can't choose a different provider, all you can do is complain to whoever you ordered something from and hope they bother to pass it on.
......and just how is the drone or driverless truck going to post a letter through a letterbox?
The US is *way* ahead of you and has been extensively testing in regions that won't get the politicians into trouble when things go wrong (and they do). They simply arm the drones, so they just create a new letterbox that can accommodate even the largest parcel. All Royal Mail has to do to adopt this is learn how to spell "collateral damage"...
/sarcasm
Bootnote: the kind of places Royal Mail has trouble delivering to also happen to have the worst possible weather for flying but I guess that's hard to fathom from an air-conditioned office.
"Over 2,960 postmen and women were attacked across the UK by dogs from April 2014 to April 2015 some leading to a permanent disabling injury. While the number of attacks has fallen by 10 per cent nationally from the previous year after the change in legislation and greater understanding through our dog awareness campaigns, it still remains unacceptably high and we are committed to driving this down further."
[ http://www.royalmailgroup.com/customers/customer-commitment/preventing-dog-attacks ]
In a previous life, I used to deliver coal. One of the guys I worked with was having problems with a Jack Russell - kept biting him. SO the customer was phoned before deliveries to ask them to keep the dog indoor.
Of course, they couldn't be arsed, not realising that the coalie has 25kg of rock on his shoulders. Next time the dog bit him on the ankle, he dropped the coal, almost by accident.
You can fill in the rest.
Posties, sadly, don't have the nuclear option.
Given that she's talking about rural areas, I think "I shot it" will work perfectly well.
"You do know that there are more guns in the country than there are in the city? Everyone and their mums is packin' round 'ere!"
"Like who?"
"Farmers."
"Who else?"
"Farmers' mums."
-Hot Fuzz, 2007.
And what happens when there is nobody at home to receive the delivery? Or if it's gramps in a wheelchair and hasn't crossed the front door threshold since his last heart attack?
I want one of these high paying jobs where you can spout diarrhea out of your mouth and the people below you that want to keep their job eat it up and ask for more!
Considering the postal union I'd expect a driver-less vehicle to have to be fully "supervised" by a fully qualified driver/postie who'll probably get paid extra if s/he has to actually get out of the vehicle to hand over mail or drop "while you were out" cards.
Meanwhile, the marketing wonks who all have iPhones will be moving towards the abolition of "while you were out" cards and switch to email alerts because "well doesn't everyone have an iPhone?"
This is the same post office that seems unable to supply its delivery staff with electric bicycles or tricycles. Other countries seem able to supply postal workers with a range of small delivery vehicles - here we are again with them talking about technology which is currently still a fantasy, while failing to do things which would improve deliveries right now.
Airspeed can also be predicted using a published formula. By inverting this midpoint Strouhal ratio of 0.3 (fA/U ≈ 0.3), Graham K. Taylor et al. show that as a rule of thumb, the speed of a flying animal is roughly 3 times frequency times amplitude (U ≈ 3fA).5
We now need only plug in the numbers:
U ≈ 3fA
f ≈ 15 (beats per second)
A ≈ 0.22 (meters per beat)
U ≈ 3*15*0.22 ≈ 9.9
... to estimate that the airspeed velocity of an unladen European Swallow is 10 meters per second.
(© http://style.org/unladenswallow)
And if those fail they'll load up the 10gauge with buckshot and let fly.
What License?
That are thousands of unlicensed shoutguns in the hands of country folk. The Police know that and often where they are but leave them alone as long as they are used for a bit of local sport. i.e Kill the fox that tries to ravage their hens and the like.
These flying things will become a welcome target for the local hotshots is some parts of the country.
Doome I tell ye, doomed.
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