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[wierd]

For all the reasons why driving on a more-or-less 2D surface is more dangerous (via incidence rate of injury or fatality per capita) than nearly anything else in the modern world, giving a whole additional dimension to the modality of travel, without also greatly increasing the stringency of licensing requirements (the apparent 'dream' of flying cars defacto has this combination) flying cars are a nightmare, not a dream.

Unless of course, you WANT to upgrade "distracted soccer mom hauling 30 unruly children in her people-carrier rear-ends the person stopped in front of her" to "Distracted soccer mom hauling 30 unruly children in her aerial people carrier collides with another flying vehicle, and crashes on a dense residential area", for some purely sociopathic reason.

Flying cars in the hands of ordinary people is just a very bad idea.

[Madman198237]

To be fair, you have removed the concept of "made extreme increase to the amount of physical space available to vehicle traffic, thus reducing the actual density of vehicle traffic and making accidents less likely".

But yes, self-flown flying cars are not a good suggestion. However, pedestrians and bicyclists and indeed most substantial objects with low radar-reflectivity are much rarer in the air than on the ground, so really all you need to do is stick a small radar system and Google self-flying car your way to safe travelling, not to mention saving lots of money on road repair-work.

[Dunamisdeos]

I always figured the American Dream was the one where if you work 40+ hours a week you make enough to pay rent and eat.

It's called a dream because it's not fucking real is it

[wierd]

Ahhh-- BUT--

1) Fuel is still finite.  Autonomous air-car cannot enter holding pattern indefinitely.
2) a vehicle without fuel will crash.
3) Parking requires ground space.
4) Ground space is finite
5) Dense urban areas will be most heavily impacted.

EG-- the notion that this will 'reduce' traffic is nonsense.  The traffic will just get congested at the points of takeoff and landing, leading to long queues if handled by software, with an upper bound on utility where sufficient traffic exceeds possibility of safe flight.


Dunamisdeos:

CLOSE--  The "American Dream" is the FANTASY that "hard work is rewarded with real increase in quality of living".

EG, Your living situation will improve, if you work hard enough.

This is demonstrably false, and has been for 30 years or more.  That does not stop the boomer generation from calling everyone lazy though.

[Loud Whispers]

I thought the American dream was when you are born wealthy but are self-made at the same time

[Madman198237]

Assuming the number of flying cars is equal to or lesser than the number of regular cars, none of your scenarios is likely, especially the concept of the airways getting so dense that we run out of airspace for flying cars. Yes, fuel is finite, but it's not that big of an issue when proper planning (and autopilot telling you when you're going to be getting out of the air to refuel) is involved. Parking does indeed require ground space, but if you can reach the incredibly-hypothetical scenario where everyone, or at least most people, flies cars instead of drives them, the amount of roadway you need to access parking space reduces dramatically, freeing up space formerly taken up by, say, freeways and eight-lane roads, to be used as parking space. Dense urban areas, it turns out, have more large roads and MUCH more freeway (per unit area) than "regular" areas, so you could save a lot of space if you could get a sufficient number of people into an as-yet hypothetical flying car capable of extremely short-runway operations (or VTOL. VTOL's cool too) on a budget acceptable to an average person (so about the same price as a non-flying car is right now).

Yeah, fine, it's not likely. But it'd be cool and useful. Oh, right. This is a derail. Sorry.

[Egan_BW]

Parking solved: just put giant parking decks everywhere, with robot arms that snatch the cars out of the air so quickly that there's never a build up of traffic, just a constant stream of the building eating cars and quickly sorting them into compact car-berths.

[sluissa]

Parking solved: just put giant parking decks everywhere, with robot arms that snatch the cars out of the air so quickly that there's never a build up of traffic, just a constant stream of the building eating cars and quickly sorting them into compact car-berths.

Just skip the cars, automated trebuchets that throw and catch people at regular intervals.

[wierd]

Soooo niave.


OK.  Ever been to a major city?  What is the ONE THING that they never have enough of?  PARKING.  Why?  Real-estate is very expensive in a dense urban environment.  Why WASTE a perfectly good plot of premium real-estate on a dense parking structure, which at best-- is barely going to generate enough revenue to cover its upkeep and security costs-- when you can use that same parcel of ground to run a profit making business selling merchandise instead!?

This is *EXACTLY* the reason why parking is systemically shorted in existing, 2D landscapes.  It is also why it will be systemically shorted in 3D landscapes.

What will happen, is that you will have a "Ultra Walmart" capable of having 600+ persons shopping, with air parking for 200 persons, and that will be considered a "Large parking" complex.

For most other parking, such as in an appartment complex, the parking spaces will be OVERSOLD, on the premise that occupants will be out of the complex most of the day at work, shopping or other--- and so the complex will have a residency in the hundreds, but have parking capacity in the dozens.  When people (for whatever reason) fail to adhere to their schedules, parking catastrophes will occur.

Throw into that mix the usual volatile cocktail of "Dont regulate Muh Free Marketz!" that would prevent the regulation required to fix that clusterfuck (by demanding a minimum science- based requirement parking capacity for major centers and housing units) and you have "OMG, DO NOT WANT" in a radioactive barrel.

[Dunamisdeos]

@ The weird american dream

Yeah that's basically what I was after.

[Madman198237]

I am quite possibly naïve about the ability of people to accept logical reasoning (in the large-groups-of-people sense, this in no way has anything to do with you or the arguments you've presented) for the betterment of their own lives. But hey, you've successfully managed to loop *flying cars* back around to American Politics, which is probably a first for the thread. Probably.

But yes, you're right. Ground-level parking might go the way of the dodo. However, if suddenly it becomes profitable to, say, reinforce your roof/a section of your roof to hold cars? Suddenly Walmart and Meijer don't need vast expanses of parking out front, now they just need your autopilot and vehicle to be capable of landing on their roofs.

Which would be *awesome*, by the way. Except for the inevitable stairs. But yes, while parking might become more scarce, it's also conceivable that it might become more common on the tops of certain types of buildings.

And in no way am I saying this will solve urban traffic congestion. If it were highly regulated (unlikely) or if the government was willing to redevelop the land presently covered by interstates (in certain locations, anyway), it might work to help congestion somewhat/a lot. But it's still one heck of a pipe dream.

[Egan_BW]

Parking solved: just put giant parking decks everywhere, with robot arms that snatch the cars out of the air so quickly that there's never a build up of traffic, just a constant stream of the building eating cars and quickly sorting them into compact car-berths.

Just skip the cars, automated trebuchets that throw and catch people at regular intervals.

Skip the physical moving part, turn our minds into data and get around through the internet.

[MrRoboto75]

I thought the American dream was when you are born wealthy but are self-made at the same time

no, that's the american meme

[wierd]

No no no.

The american meme is "We're number one!"

[Folly]

I see no reason why the advent of flying cars would increase the amount of parking needed, so that's not even an issue. And even if it was, being able to build parking lots vertically would exponentially increase the amount of cars we can fit onto existing ground space.

Uber's Elevate project is scheduled to begin flying passengers as early as 2020!