This Is Why Amazon’s Delivery Drones Keep Crashing

Amazon’s fleet of drones has a long, rich history of not working. The mega-corp’s dream of bombarding homes with packages filled with knick-knacks like it was the London Blitz is floundering, but at least we’re finally starting to understand why they keep falling.

According to Bloomberg, which obtained documents from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), a software update made the lidar sensors on Amazon’s MK30 delivery drones vulnerable to even light rain.

Lidar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, helps drones “see” the ground using lasers. But during the test, the lidar got confused, thought the drone had landed, and cut the power mid-flight, so they plummeted.

The previous model, the MK27, had a backup system, the disconcertingly named squat switches, which were two metal prongs that physically confirmed the drone had touched down. This redundant sensor setup made sure the drone didn’t just rely on glitchy lasers.

But Amazon got rid of those, possibly as a cost-cutting measure. Amazon denies this, however, calling such claims “misleading” and “irresponsible.”

Why Do Amazon Drones Keep Crashing So Much?

On top of that, the MK30 isn’t even built to land anymore. Unlike the MK27, which nestled into your lawn like a giant, buzzing hummingbird, the new drones just drop your package from about a dozen feet up.

There is no need to touch the ground, there is no need for landing sensors. It’s simple and elegant logic…that completely falls apart the second you need a drone to land.

It’s been twelve years (and counting) since Jeff Bezos first teased Prime Air. And all Amazon has to show for it is a whole lot of pissed-off folks in a handful of testing ground towns across the U.S. who just don’t want to deal with all these goddamn drones anymore, with their stupid loud noise and their random plummeting from the sky and their causing of forest fires.