It’s a beautiful summer Saturday in New York, so what better time for a trip to Rockaway Beach? You smile as you slide into the cool water and swim out a little further, admiring the beach from the sea. Then.. disaster! An unexpectedly strong wave crashes over you, plunging you deep under the water! You frantically try to surface, spitting out seawater, your eyes widening as you realize you’ve been dragged much further from the shore than you thought.
As you kick your rapidly weakening legs, you hear a buzzing sound. It’s a drone! You feebly try to stay afloat, each minute closer to a watery grave, when you hear a weirdly familiar voice. “Citizen, this is your mayor. Please stay calm. Try not to waste excess energy.” Wait… is that drone… Mayor Eric Adams?!
As your nose slips beneath the waves and you watch the sunlight glitter through the water’s surface above you, the last thing your oxygen-starved brain hears is a muffled playback of “Empire State of Mind”.
It sounds like some dystopian sci-fi, but this is what will actually happen to drowning swimmers in New York very soon (okay, maybe not the “Empire State of Mind” part).
Speaking about drones that can tell swimmers who may be drowning that help is on the way, @NYCMayor says they're "gonna use my voice, because I have a calming voice." The drones can also drop a flotation device, he says. pic.twitter.com/sJYobEnfSp
— Ethan Stark-Miller (@Estarkmiller) May 23, 2025
Yesterday, New York Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a fleet of new robotic drones that will patrol the city’s 14 miles of waterfront, monitoring the sea for anyone in trouble. If it spots someone in distress it’ll swoop down, alert lifeguards, and deploy some kind of flotation device. It will also give advice, like telling people in trouble to swim diagonally against a riptide.
And yes, Adams confirmed that the robots will be speaking in his voice: “We’re gonna use my voice because I have a calming voice.” Responses from New Yorkers to that news are pretty much what you’d expect: “would rather drown”, “drowning just got way more appealing”, “imagine that p.o.s. voice being the last thing you hear in your life…”
Some kind of new water safety measures are necessary in New York. After all, seven people drowned at the city’s public beaches last summer (the most since 2019), the city has struggled to hire enough lifeguards, and the drones will also double up as anti-shark tech.
All that said, if it’s a choice between a watery grave and being rescued by a flying Eric Adams drone… I guess I’m picking the drone. Maybe.
Published: May 24, 2025 03:33 am