@thu yes, and I assumed (apparently incorrectly) that it's obvious that helicopters won't work in such cases. let me rephrase :
Every bigger winter storm slows down emergency response - this potentially could get to the person faster than a snow plow followed by an ambulance and be able to land in your driveway or on the street, between the buildings. Same thing with flooding, landslides, avalanches..
On highways, bigger accidents block large parts of the road making it very hard to get to the injured, and is small enough to land on a side of a highway, or between crashed cars.
It potentially could arrive faster to any place in its range than a regular ambulance could, since it does not need to have a trained pilot, less maintenance, no control tower etc.
If it was fully autonomous you could deliver few EMTs to the place of an accident, and have them ship the worst cases to the hospital while staying at the site and working on stabilizing the rest. Helicopters are not autonomous.
Every bigger winter storm slows down emergency response - this potentially could get to the person faster than a snow plow followed by an ambulance and be able to land in your driveway or on the street, between the buildings. Same thing with flooding, landslides, avalanches..
On highways, bigger accidents block large parts of the road making it very hard to get to the injured, and is small enough to land on a side of a highway, or between crashed cars.
It potentially could arrive faster to any place in its range than a regular ambulance could, since it does not need to have a trained pilot, less maintenance, no control tower etc.
If it was fully autonomous you could deliver few EMTs to the place of an accident, and have them ship the worst cases to the hospital while staying at the site and working on stabilizing the rest. Helicopters are not autonomous.
It would be cheaper to make and operate.
Better?