The Problem With Roads...

[TheArkansasRoadgeek]

Eventually we'll need to build roads to bypass more roads, Due to traffic. So, why not say "Fuck you roads" and start some flying cars and tractor beams?

Thoughts?

[NE2]

No

[GaryV]

In the Jetsons, the flying cars all followed "traffic lanes" that got clogged up like today's freeways at rush hour?

Why?  If you had a flying car, wouldn't you go on a straight-line route from start to finish?  Even if there was some kind of law restricting flight paths, the MFFY drivers would head off on their own.

And then imagine the crashes that would ensue!

Maybe if self-driving cars become a mass-consumption reality, there wouldn't be the need for new roads.  The existing roads could handle more traffic, because the system would know where every car was going and would program accordingly.  (This would require that roads be designated for self-driving cars only, something that might be done just as some lanes are designated for carpools only.)  That is, until someone hacked the system and everything went to heck in a hand basket.

[cjk374]

Hell to the naw! Then the FAA would get involved since flying is their field of expertise.

[epzik8]

We should have had the technology years ago.

[wanderer2575]

We should have had the technology years ago.

We did.  It's just not feasible.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3188/why-were-midcentury-futurist-predictions-like-flying-cars-so-wrong

And even if it were, the results could be scary:

Look at your fellow commuters:  The woman in the next car is reading her Kindle.  The guy on the other side is shaving.  The kid ahead of you is sexting his boyfriend.  These are the people you want driving around the sky at 125 miles an hour?

[TheArkansasRoadgeek]

We should have had the technology years ago.

Back To The Future= 2015

[TheArkansasRoadgeek]

We should have had the technology years ago.

We did.  It's just not feasible.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3188/why-were-midcentury-futurist-predictions-like-flying-cars-so-wrong

And even if it were, the results could be scary:

Look at your fellow commuters:  The woman in the next car is reading her Kindle.  The guy on the other side is shaving.  The kid ahead of you is sexting his boyfriend.  These are the people you want driving around the sky at 125 miles an hour?

Like in Family Guy's "Food Kills"! There were flying cars in the documentary that drove on the ground because everyone was too fat to allow the car to fly! 

[theroadwayone]

The technology for flying cars is here; it's just a matter of making it work properly, and that can take years. But it'll come, one way or another.

[Aerobird]

The technology for flying cars is here; it's just a matter of making it work properly, and that can take years. But it'll come, one way or another.

They said that in 1946 as well.

[MNHighwayMan]

I'm pretty sure I said this in another thread, but: we do have flying cars. They're called helicopters. The reason they're not ubiquitous is because they're huge, loud, and expensive. Furthermore, as it turns out, managing three axes of motion is much more difficult than two. Who knew.

[Takumi]

I'm pretty sure I said this in another thread, but: we do have flying cars. They're called helicopters. The reason they're not ubiquitous is because they're huge, loud, and expensive. Furthermore, as it turns out, managing three axes of motion is much more difficult than two. Who knew.

[TheArkansasRoadgeek]

Well, our state DOT's will have a field day setting up tractor beams. I guess you'd need a piolts license of some sort.

[formulanone]

I'm pretty sure I said this in another thread, but: we do have flying cars. They're called helicopters. The reason they're not ubiquitous is because they're huge, loud, and expensive. Furthermore, as it turns out, managing three axes of motion is much more difficult than two. Who knew.

A seasoned commercial airline pilot once told me that he found flying a helicopter much more difficult than anticipated.

[DJStephens]

yeah, that guy "Gentry" would second that.   

[Roadgeekteen]

just no