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Comment by Treegarden | Hacker News Reader

As much as I wish for flying cars in the future, Elon said they would be too loud and dangerous to be feasible. You can watch what exactly he said on the ted interview, would be interested in an counter argument to his position.

Edit: here is the exact video (1 min long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nz69M6khCs

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Noise quickly becomes a non issue with altitude. But, yea you would probably notice someone next door taking off or landing.

IMO and his major point the issue/risk is falling cars. NYC for example does not have many safe places to crash, or just have a hubcap fall off. Aircraft tend to mostly hit empty fields and mountains because that's what most of the US is covered with. Still, plenty of people have died sitting at home as an aircraft failed and making that 10,000x as bad seems like a significant issue.

NYC specifically knows exactly what it's like to have a lot of aerial taxi traffic, as helicopter shuttles were really popular there until the crash on the PanAm building and withdrawal of all permits for on-building helipads. The risks are far too great to allow flying machines in city centres.

By “withdrawal of all permits” does this mean for new helipads? Or were all on-building helipads in NYC prohibited to operate going forward?

In 1977 NYC has suspended all helicopter traffic in the city after the crash and only allowed new heliports along the river:

https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/may-16-1977-he...

TIL! Thank you!

> Aircraft tend to mostly hit empty fields and mountains because that's what most of the US is covered with.

Also because the route takes them that way. People are going to be doing short commute runs in these flying taxis (airport to city, house to work, etc). That's not over lots and lots of nothing in the general case.

Ditching in NYC is pretty easy as there is a huge body of water next to it (also, why airports are built near water if possible).

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