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Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

That's why I don't think we would ever have flying cars either. We can barely handle driving on flat surfaces and I suspect most people on the road only get by idly emulating simple line following machines rather than actually engaging the whole situation.

It takes a third party to orchestrate busy sections of our current flying vehicles, planes, so I can't see any alternative to full automation of a mass of flying cars.

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I mean cars wouldn't be accepted today if they were just invented. The only reason why we think 30k deaths a year is fine is because "that's the way it's always been", and cars come from an age when one out of three children would die before they turned 5.

In a sane world we would have only segregated rail transport in urban areas and cars in rural areas where the population density is less than 10 people a square mile.

For the whole world, cars kill 1.2 million people per year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

Though there are better places than the US, quite a few countries are willing to put up with absurdly higher risks.

Agree on the flying part, not so much on the line following machine. If you think about it: think about the vast amount of cars and miles driven every day. Think of the sheer number of decisions every driver has to make all the time. I think it’s a wonder that the traffic accident rate is rather low.

About 40,000 people died last year in the US. That's over 100 people dead every single day. Millions are injured on a scale from minor bruising to permanent disability every year. It's the number one cause of accidental death if you ignore overdoses. This is not a low rate.

It takes a third party to orchestrate busy sections of our current non-flying vehicles too!

I'm of the same mind. There's a reason pilots have to have hundreds of hours of training before they are allowed to fly solo. Adding a third dimension to piloting a small personal vehicle takes every bit of concentration and awareness a human can handle. I definitely don't want to see the average driver next to me every morning and afternoon -- the one making all kinds of bad decisions like running red lights and not looking before merging -- behind the wheel/stick of a flying craft.

Conversely, there are a bunch of countries where you can get your PPL before your driving license. I first flew a plane when I was 14. It's not that hard.

Not while the sky is still big enough perhaps. I can take off, poke about and land at a rural airport without seeing anyone but without coordination a busy airport would be a writhing pile of twisted metal. Also it does take a particular type of person to choose to fly, so you are already in a minority of people. The majority of people drive, that is a lot of room for bad judgement.

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