The Many Problems of Flying Cars
Economic vs. Technological Problem
Dr. Hall makes a point where he talks about his plane vs a helicopter and the differences between them. He describes the helicopter as being more in line with the idea of the jetsons as it can land on a smaller landing pad with about the same speed as a standard plane. He goes on to state that this means we have the technology to accomplish this but not the economy to match the flintstones. I would heavily argue against this because it does not fully understand the level of infrastructure needed to support even a helicopter. First of all, any job in the city would have to completely rebuild their parking lots to accommodate vehicles that are much larger and taller than the standard car and create room for them. Next we would have to develop ways to create giant open parking garages so that planes can fly in and land at them as it would be impossible for every plane to just land on open air helipads. Next we would have to lift every building in the country high enough planes can fly up and use things like drive throughs without scraping the pavement. Building everything this high is just asking for an earthquake or tornado to destroy everything we painfully spent billions on creating. Next is the fact of camera technology. In cars we are on the ground and away from most reflective surfaces than can blind cameras and stop them from watching roadways. In the sky the cameras could be obstructed by flying animals, and can be blinded by the glare off the surface of the planet. A far more obvious thing is that planes are significantly faster than cars are. We as a society do not have enough storage capability to use high end cameras that can catch the plate number of a helicopter, which we would have to create as some form of identification. Next on the economic side of the problem he does have a good point with some of the technology being there but the funds aren’t. However this is not on a person by person basis. Rather this is an economic problem that is felt by the entire country. What I mean by this is that our infrastructure as a society is not built for a helicopter based life and as such would need to be essentially destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up in order to service this new lifestyle.
Safety
Another good point against using helicopters or something of the like in modern day is the fact of safety. Now cars are much safer for many reasons than helicopters. For one, if you run out of gas on the road the most you suffer is having to wait until a stranger is willing to give you a lift, even if they are bad intentions, while in a helicopter at a higher altitude you most likely will crash and die. Cars in the modern day are built with frames that are designed to crush around the passengers and driver in order to take the force of a crash so that the people within the car don’t have to, thus giving a higher chance for survival. A helicopter or some other flying vehicle can not reach the same tier of intelligence collapsibility due to the wind pressures that they might experience. Just because there is nothing we can see in the sky does not mean that a helicopter won’t take a beating during everyday usage. High winds are damaging and cause helicopter manufacturers to use stronger and denser designs than cars to prevent them from collapsing in on themselves due to wind speeds.
Speed
Flying cars may not even be a faster option than cars during some periods. Everyone has driven when there were high wind speeds and felt their car getting pushed around as they drove. Most of the time it is manageable because we are not experiencing the full force of the wind as the trees, in Oklahoma a mass effort to plant trees was created after the dust bowl, and buildings cut down on the wind speeds that could slow us down. In the sky there is nothing to prevent the wind from pushing you around. There are several videos on the internet where pilots are pushing their planes and helicopters pretty hard but the wind speed against them is so high that they are just sitting there in the sky.
Security
Cars are significantly less dangerous than a helicopter or plane. We erect metal barricades and roadblocks in order to stop cars from running into buildings and high pedestrian traffic areas. No matter what we do we can’t build the same type of defense against a flying vehicle. Flying vehicles have been used to terrible effect in the past, look at the tragedy of 9/11, and having them available on a mass scale would also cause worse situations. When a car is being used to get away from the police they can follow it with helicopters and by knowing the limited amount of roads that the car can take to get away. In a plane we would have to employ military level radar technology at every police station in the country in order to track helicopters used by criminals as they can go in any direction without the restraint of roadways.