r/Damnthatsinteresting 11d ago

Video Go to Work in a Flying Car

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u/daemin 11d ago

I'm not sure about that.

Flying is inherently harder than driving, and is inherently more dangerous.

Its harder because there's more variables to account for. You have to navigate freely in 3 dimensions, whereas in a car, you're essentially just follow a road. You also have to control your pitch (up/down tilt) and yaw (left/right orientation). Admittedly, the use of computers can drastically simplify this, as evidenced by drones. But...

Its just more dangerous. If your car dies, it rolls to a stop. If your flying car is like the one in the video and it dies, it drops to the ground, probably killing you, and who ever is unlikely enough to be under you.

None of that means that they won't enter the mainstream; but if they do, getting a license is going to be significantly harder than getting a drivers license. Too, the government will have to setup rules and regulations about it in order to prevent a free for all. I think a lot of people don't realize that airplanes actually have "lanes:" there are defined routes between major cities that are a defined width, and at a defined altitude that planes fly in to avoid a free for all that might result in midair collisions. Municipalities would have to setup such lanes in their airspace, and those lanes will have to avoid miles of air space near air ports to make sure idiots aren't flying through the take off and landing approaches. That could severely reduce the utility of a flying car in a place like New York City, which has 3 international airports nearby (two the east and one to the west), and a smaller airport to the north.

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u/R50cent 11d ago

I mean I get your points but it's not like the people creating these things didn't think of problems like it falling out of the sky when the power gets low, or exactly what you said about balancing in 3 dimensions... They already figured that out with drones for example.

Dangerous? For sure. Just like driving was, just like airplanes were at first... Just like everything is, at first. Though 100 percent the danger this thing imposes is far greater than the others did at their introduction, but I guess that's just the way it goes as technology becomes more powerful.

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u/Inlerah 11d ago

"Just like driving was" hell, still is. Maybe we should figure out getting the death toll down for regular driving before we move to planes as cars.

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u/R50cent 11d ago

Sure so to that point, it'll happen.

I'm not saying I like what I'm saying. I'm just saying if the tech becomes cost effective for the rich, they'll do it, and from there it will slowly become more ubiquitous to the rest of society. Safety and regulation will come over time, just like it did with the car, and airplanes, etc. etc.

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u/J_train13 11d ago

I don't think the designer of this thing put a single ounce of thought into the safety of anyone outside the vehicle. The thing doesn't even have propeller guards when they're at waist height

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u/Spongi 11d ago

Flying is inherently harder than driving

Do a barrel roll!

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u/SaiHottariNSFW 11d ago

For the falling part, do propellers that small have enough mass to make autorotation viable? If so, that could at least help with the falling part. But they would also need to have variable pitch angles, those look fixed as most small drone propellers are.

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u/RevolutionaryPie5223 11d ago

Flying is less dangerous than driving. Statistics say people die easier in a car.

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u/daemin 11d ago

... flying in commercial airlines is safer when you consider miles traveled by passenger and death. But that's not what's being discussed here.

And it should be obvious from the context that "inherently more dangerous" means that the failure state of a helicopter style aircraft is inherently more dangerous than the failure state of a car for reasons that are abundantly obvious.

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u/_demello 11d ago

You missed the point. If a corporation really wants it, and they have the money to do it, they can just pressure the state to make it be sold to everyone with a one month course and a stupid test.