Impact aside, really, any contact to a soft meat bag by an 80lb machine surrounded by whirling propellers at high rpm will result in an unpleasant outcome.

An 80lb mass moving at any appreciable speed hitting you is going to suck regardless of what it is.

At a leisurely 3 mi/h, wolfram alpha gives this amusing comparison: about 0.36 times the momentum of an American football player moving at a speed of 1 m/s.

With the information we have about the actual incident, it seems you'd only be at risk of that happening if you were as thin as a cable.

If it runs into the cable and tumbles down on you, it's a very real risk.

It seems like getting hit by a falling drone would be very dangerous if you are a roofer or not.

Or if you're being suspended by the cable of a crane.

Any modern roofer or other worker that could fall far is wearing a safety harness (with some exceptions for flat roofs that have railing set up).

You don’t wear a harness when framing and roofing 1 and 2 storey buildings. What would you even attach yourself to?

“I will not be hit by an 80 pound flying missile” is a reasonable expectation for construction workers

The framers have nothing to attach to until there's structure, and they don't really need to get up there much until they do the decking. They can attach lines to the ridge then. So can the roofers when it's their turn.

When I was a roofer, I think we might have used safety lines and harnesses twice, when the pitch was too steep.

I've never seen residential house roofers wearing a safety harness, even on 2-story jobs. There's generally nowhere to clip the harness to on such buildings, so it wouldn't help anyway.

There's roof safety anchor systems which are designed for residential roofs. Look for something like the Ridgepro anchor: https://www.theridgepro.com/

It does seem best when using lag bolts to secure such an anchor to the roof but even when not screwed to the roof should provide some level of fall safety.

Are these used in practice? In what regions? In Seattle suburbs, I've never seen a crew wearing any kind of attached harness.

They should be, but I also rarely see roofers in harnesses around here on the other side of the country. It's one thing when it's a roofer himself making the (stupid) decision, but a lot of the guys I see actually on the roofs are non-English-speaking laborers basically told to get the job done and not ask questions.

I am going to wager that 90% of resi roofers are not using harnesses unless the pitch of the roof is extreme. It’s all about the couch cushion.

Generally speaking you start doing that stuff once you get to 3 or more storeys, which is why residential mass builds are typically 2 or less. Workers’ compensation will specifically have job categories for work done on buildings 2 storeys or less, and it goes way up once you get to 3 (and even more for 4+).

Even with all the gear, an unpredictable 80 lb object hurtling towards you is a major problem. Not to mention becoming a problem for any standing below.

YUP

Was working for a construction guy I overall respected, and he had us going up on a 3-story barn roof without any kind of roped-in protection. Although I was a fairly experienced rock climber (or perhaps because of it), I quit at lunch.

I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to have the backup finances to be able to afford to quit.

I had a chimney inspection and cap on my pretty steep pitched residential roof last year in MA on 2 story house. No harnesses that I saw. Wouldn’t be for me.

Certainly harnesses and other safety gear are much more common in many situations.

A coworker (also works from home) had some commotion across the street, when one of the roofers on his neighbour's place went off the second-story roof. All these guys were wearing harnesses, but not clipped in. The one who fell was luck in that he hit a garden shed roof rather than another 8' to the concrete, but was definitely hurt. Fire department came, yelled at these guys for being idiots. Roofers said they'd comply, and once the FD left, went back to what they were doing. This is right after losing a guy to a fall.

Years ago I heard a comment from someone in the trades that (in his opinion) harnesses are a net negative on typical single-family-houses - the presence of the rigging (particularly when there are multiple workers on the roof) creates trip hazards that make falls and injuries more likely.

Whether or not it's true, if significant numbers of crews believe this they won't be wearing harnesses on low roofs.

And the not much here is an 80 pounds drone (Mk30).

Thank you, I stand corrected!

Shotguns are now standard issue, Foreman finally gets to work

Exemplary of the new norm of engineering practice in the US: "if all you have is a shotgun, everything looks like a target." In this context, casualties at ground level be damned.

Literally everything around us has the same dangers. Like getting into a car and doing 70mph in the opposite direction of some stranger doing the same speed possibly drunk or high. This tech will be completely standard and everywhere eventually and no one will pay attention to it. Benefits will outweigh any risks and just like cars people won’t be going around fearing them.