Predictable: bare-rotored flying misletoe-copter at TGIF slices up bystander's face

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I predict a quick and quiet settlement, for a large but undisclosed sum. TGIF will not be required to admit wrongdoing.

But there won’t be anymore drones flying around in their restaurants.

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Anyone involved in the multiroter hobby would have told TGIF that this was a bad idea. There are too many things that can easily go wrong with a multiroter for them to be safe in such close proximity to people.

And honestly, as much as TGIF shouldn’t have been using a multiroter, that reporter is lucky to have come out as undamaged as she did. Here’s some more normal injuries (gore): http://redd.it/1b5ihe and http://redd.it/2dvu18

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“an accident like this had never happened before, and even blamed our reporter for the bloodshed.”

People say the darndest things when they’ve messed up and know it.

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The Consumer was informed: “That’ll buff right out!”

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I really don’t understand what she’s complaining about…

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When I hear “sliced open” I expect to see bone and cartilage.

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Predictable: “slices up bystander’s face” means “a tiny scratch on the nose”.

I had worse from regular cooling fans, though not on the nose. Given the amount of drone shenanigans, they have impressive safety record.

The tech is fairly new and some tricks like shape of rotor blade ends will be done for better safety, and prop guards are a good idea too. The things will evolve, if the sensationalist reporters won’t squash them.

For beginners there are the really tiny ones. I am just these days getting familiar with the Micro Drone 2.0, which is pretty suitable for indoor operation; it is surprisingly robust, crash-wise. Though the payload capacity is crap, but that can be alleviated by weight-sensitive payload engineering.

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“Alex, I’ll take chain restaurants for 400.”
“The answer is ‘Getting sliced in the face with a drone’.”
“What is ‘something I’d prefer to eating at TGI Fridays’?”
“That is correct!”

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Given that they were operating unshrouded rotors in close proximity to people I can only imagine that their own insurance company is begging them to STFU before they dig the hole any deeper.

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It’s not hard to protect the blades from chopping into people. I work with high school kids doing things like firing trebuchets and driving big scary robots, and we put forth effort to ensure that we don’t hurt the audience. You’d think that someone at this event would have done a bit of safety worrying.

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As if it wasn’t already a stupid idea, incidents like this will really put a nail in the coffin of Amazon’s delivery drones.

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Flinching is pretty involuntary. How can it be her fault?

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Amazing how I knew when I got to the quote that it "chipped off a tip of my nose,” that there were going to be people complaining that she wasn’t injured enough.

I expect what she said is factually correct. I’m sorry that your expectation of more gore isn’t satisfied, but it doesn’t make the victim of the accident any less of a victim.

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If the mistletoe had been suspended from one of these, I’m sure we would all have our gore quotient satisfied, if not exceeded.

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Queasy as I am with people’s graphic expectations of how gory this could be, I think you’re missing a subtle distinction. They’re not complaining the wound wasn’t horrible enough (I hope), they’re wishing the headline didn’t appeal to sensationalist ‘face sliced open’ hyperbole.

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Well, “drone blade causes a tiny scratch on a bystander’s nose tip” apparently does not have the proper “ring” to it. From the headline itself, I expected to see at least half-inch deep cut across cheek. So she got injured, yes, great, but not enough to warrant this kind of a headline.

What it actually was was less bad than what I get when I make a mistake and stick a fingertip into a spinning computer heatsink fan. (Pro tip: don’t do it, it is unpleasant and can break off a blade. You can replace it with a blob of hot glue to balance the rotor if you don’t have a spare, but it will never be like before.)

Such little scratch barely if ever warrants even calling the recipient a “victim”. It cheapens the victimhood associated with real injuries that take more than a day to heal. Do it often enough and expectations shift and people will shrug over things that actually deserve attention.

The world shouldn’t look as so much more hostile place when you just browse the headlines.

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In the drone war on couple estrangement, a few innocent bystanders are bound to get hit. But we have safer targeting of holiday grinchitude and it keeps our waitstaff out of the conflict.

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Isn’t it fun to pretend you don’t understand something that’s perfectly obvious? Then you can blame others for saying something horrible they didn’t actually say. Hooray internet!

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This is what annoys me about this place. Too many people on their high horse.

What telecinese said…

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