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Comment by SurrealSoul | Hacker News Reader

Flying cars seems like a horrible idea.

Pros: Alleviate ground congestion, potentially go faster

Cons: Landing, air congestion, higher risk than driving

I know this is still super fresh, but honestly moving our already horribly unsafe daily communte up several thousand feet in the sky doesn't make much sense to me. I seen people survive horrible car crashes, I haven't heard of anyone walking off a 1-on-1 plane crash

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I think "flying car" should be reframed as 'noisy expensive conventional personal aircraft'.

'Flying car' is associated with what you see in scifi movies, they never use conventional aircraft tech, they can lock in space, don't burn oil, don't sound like an high-pitched overblown fan, don't have wings, ... They are piggy-backing on this image without delivering the necessary innovations. Unless someone hacks gravity or improves energy density of batteries beyond today's dreams, "flying cars" will stay a scam, it won't happen. More likely to see everyone riding segways by 2020... With global warming, the idea of vast distribution of personal aircrafts integrated into daily lives is beyond absurd, IMHO.

Flying cars seem great for rare occasions (including actual emergencies - ie, flying ambulances that could safely land on a residential street), not for daily commuting.

like a helicopter?

Hard to fit an helicopter here, but cars enter well: https://praqualquerlugar.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/alfama-...

hard to imagine landing a car there

The BlackFly doesn't seem wider than two regular cars, so I don't see why not.

> Flying cars seems like a horrible idea.

It depends on the use case. For high-density urban areas, the challenges probably outweigh the benefits. But for low-density, rural/semi-rural regions, those who commute an hour or more could really benefit from such a vehicle. For example, hospital staff driving home after a long shift.

That is a very good point. I had not considered that. Thanks.

> I haven't heard of anyone walking off a 1-on-1 plane crash

Offtopic and nitpicking, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Negev_mid-air_collision

Everything looks impossible until someone does it. And keep in mind that flying is actually safer than driving. Yes, if you have an accident the odds of being lethal are increased but keep in mind that it is not the same kind of flying. 10000m vs 100m and the speed is also different. Have you ever looked at the fatalities in commercial flying in the early 30s? Better systems were implemented and it is perfectly safe now. So even if there is still a long way to go, someone has to walk that way and take the rewards.

Commercial flights are super safe because there's a million regulations to follow. An airplane costs $100 million or so and is flown by a super trained crew.

How is that going to be replicated for $20k cars?

It probably won't, it might be replicated by million dollar automated flying taxi's though?

Could be. Isn't automated flying even harder than automated driving? After all, it's not going to be military drone flying with no obstacles, we're talking about flying and landing in an urban environment.

When commercial aviation started the regulation was really loose. There were not even a consenus on how to report accidents, how to tell the root cause, etc... We face a similar problem with flying cars. Can they be used as safely as standard cars are used? I think the bar is that low. But we should push for more and learn from mistakes done in road safety, like the need of humans to control your capacity to drive. Yes, it is going to be hard, but is going to be done eventually.

I'd think "flying cars" would clearly fall under existing aviation rules. Those aren't as strict for smaller aircraft/private use as they are for commercial airlines, but there's still a regulatory framework already.

It would definitely make sense as a starting point. But it has some specific use cases that would require specialized regulation. Anyway, someday this will become a reality and we will see if the rules fit.

For private use the laws where I am are much stricter (and can be broadly summarized as a "short whitelist of places where you can fly").

True. I should have specified that I was thinking more along the lines of safety regulations etc., where generally General Aviation is less strictly checked.

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