Flying Cars!

The future, as I envisioned it when I was 10, is almost here! The Terrafugia Transition flying car is on the horizon. Here's a video clip of how it works: http://www.flixxy.com/terrafugia-transition-flying-car.htm.

Imagine being able to fly wherever you're going...flying over all of the traffic, by-passing red lights, rude drivers and speed traps. It would be awesome...but it won't work. I can think of several reasons why.

First, like in the video, you would have to have a place to take off and land, and that would require order and patience to get to your turn. This would be inconvenient, especially considering that people can't wait 5 seconds to allow you to pass without pulling out in front of you. Last Saturday a woman passed me on the inside (I was going 10 over the limit!) and passed the car in front of me through a turn lane so she could turn right at the next light. Neither me nor the woman in front of me were turning, so this gal saved herself exactly no time as she wound up precisely where she would have been had she been driving the speed limit. Pardon the pun, but in an airborne vehicle this kind of "driving" won't fly.

Second, people cannot (in general) manage well in two dimensions, so I doubt that they'll do better navigating in three. For instance, many people cannot merge into traffic from a side road without causing congestion. Some will actually cause accidents because they hesitate or actually stop in the merge lane. In an airborne vehicle, hesitation means plummeting to the ground and dying. Inability to negotiate traffic means collisions. Collisions in an airborne vehicle mean, again, plummeting to the ground and dying.

Third, I imagine that the permits required and the requisite insurance would be more expensive than the average person would want to pay in both time and dollars, especially since a percentage of the population won't register or insure their cars today. At $148,000 the vehicle itself would cost more than some people's houses. That may be the only thing keeping it viable - only the truly rich could afford it, and they'll probably have a trained driver/pilot to ferry them about.

It's OK to dream though, and for a $7400 deposit and the patience to wait until 2009, the Terrafugia Transition makes this dream almost a reality.