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I love Rodney Brooks' work, but I don't know that I put any large amount of weight behind his opinions here. I mean, more than a standard human, definitely, but

I love Rodney Brooks' work, but I don't know that I put any large amount of weight behind his opinions here. I mean, more than a standard human, definitely, but I'd much rather listen to a lot of other minds. Case in point: flying cars. He lists fine and dandy engineering points, but the reason we don't have flying cars, and almost certainly never will without inventing magical tech, is logistical and societal. Airspace isn't really 3D, but rather "2.5D", and putting vehicles up there in any significant amount is a really difficult problem. In the end, we'd just put congestion in the air. Imagine how loud (prop) airplanes are, now imagine hundreds flying above you all the time. But even more fundamental is safety. Right now, it is a frequent occurrence to see a car by the side of the road. Imagine that is a flying car, except instead of pulling safely to the side of the road, it plummets to the ground. In most places you want to use a flying car, there is a high probability that you end up on someones house. This is bad. Sure, you can invent tech that prevents that, but it is mostly of the "never fails", aka magical, variety. In short, failing when you are hundreds of feet in the air is far more dangerous than failing on the ground, for everyone involved.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Ultralights and other small aircraft use a "ballistic parachute" to create a soft landing in emergencies. It's not foolproof - you can parachute onto a power line or into water - but it's (usually) better than a crash. Safety isn't an issue for flying cars as long as they're as safe as regular cars. We have something like 40,000 deaths a year from regular cars, so flying cars don't have to be perfect. (At least, they don't have to be perfect for social reasons. They may have to be perfect for legal reasons, to avoid the manufacturer being sued to oblivion. If they're not perfect, the crashes will have to be attributable to driver error instead of product defects, or they're gonna get mega-sued.)
- gilbetron 5y ago
  40,000 deaths, sure, but flying cars would certainly be going faster, and well, they are in the air, the danger is at least an order of magnitude greater. And that doesn't factor in the people on the ground underneath these vehicles. The vast majority of the time when a car has a mechanical or electrical difficulty, the driver simply pulls over to the side of the road. Such a difficulty in the air is suddenly a life-or-death situation. Just look at some of the crappy, barely running autos on the road and then imagine them flying above your house.
narrator 5y ago
Flying cars largely won't work in bad weather. They will also be easily be thrown around in a vomit inducing manner by mildly bad weather as anyone who's done small plane aviation has experience with. They also have to be in almost perfect operating condition. Any sort of half working thing will lead to a crash.
- partomniscient 5y ago
  I never got the whole flying cars thing. We have flying cars, they're called planes.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Ultralights and other small aircraft use a "ballistic parachute" to create a soft landing in emergencies. It's not foolproof - you can parachute onto a power line or into water - but it's (usually) better than a crash. Safety isn't an issue for flying cars as long as they're as safe as regular cars. We have something like 40,000 deaths a year from regular cars, so flying cars don't have to be perfect. (At least, they don't have to be perfect for social reasons. They may have to be perfect for legal reasons, to avoid the manufacturer being sued to oblivion. If they're not perfect, the crashes will have to be attributable to driver error instead of product defects, or they're gonna get mega-sued.)

gilbetron 5y ago
40,000 deaths, sure, but flying cars would certainly be going faster, and well, they are in the air, the danger is at least an order of magnitude greater. And that doesn't factor in the people on the ground underneath these vehicles. The vast majority of the time when a car has a mechanical or electrical difficulty, the driver simply pulls over to the side of the road. Such a difficulty in the air is suddenly a life-or-death situation. Just look at some of the crappy, barely running autos on the road and then imagine them flying above your house.

narrator 5y ago

Flying cars largely won't work in bad weather. They will also be easily be thrown around in a vomit inducing manner by mildly bad weather as anyone who's done small plane aviation has experience with. They also have to be in almost perfect operating condition. Any sort of half working thing will lead to a crash.

partomniscient 5y ago
I never got the whole flying cars thing. We have flying cars, they're called planes.