Drive-Thru in the Sky

Flying cars: yes, please!

Picture a sort of world where for transportation, people walk and bike on land (and swim in water), but utilize flying cars in the air at one range of elevation (say, between 1,000 and 1,500 feet) and fly in jet planes in the air at another range of elevation (35,000 feet, the approximate average for airplanes today). No more roads on earth clogged by heavy traffic. Less pollution. More conservation of natural resources. More people exercising in the great outdoors.

But even if this flying car were to become more than a one-hit wonder once it premieres in two years or so, and manages to catch on with the general public and not just eccentrics and millionaires (for starters, after lowering its absurd price) -- there are a great deal of logistics to work out to ensure the feasibility and safety before it can oust regular automobiles as the primary mode of transport.

Just for fun, here are some questions: Will only those who passed a combination driver's education/pilot's training program be allowed to legally operate these vehicles? In terms of who is actually maneuvering these vehicles--will they be automated and as hands-free as a Disney ride, or require a pilot to navigate the skies and judge the proximity to other vehicles? In the latter's case particularly, I would hope the training is intense, given how even more dangerous driving a car aloft in the air is compared to driving it on the road. Even with auto-pilot, suppose something went wrong; you'd need to know what to do. And either way (auto-pilot or manual drive), what about safety policies inside the vehicle like the mandate of seat belts? Also, there should be annual renewal courses for holding a license to drive/fly.

One major impetus, in my opinion, behind flying cars is reducing road traffic and traffic snarls; you'd think that with so much open and 'empty' space up there this concern would fly out the window. But still, are we going to have numerous pilot-police squads patrolling the skies, on alert for those "changing lanes" without the proper signals, zig-zagging too much and too closely to other vehicles, accelerating too quickly, attempting to compete with the planes and fly at a higher and illegal elevation...?

(After all, the point isn't to train fighter jet pilots and military servicemen, but to teach regular citizens attempting to reach a suburban destination in peace.)

There would need to be a computerized regulation system built into all cars' operational systems, which automatically coordinates with and adjusts for other vehicles regarding places and times for take-off and touch-down (so that vehicles aren't crashing into one another).

And what about birds, by the way? With cars taking off and zooming up into the air en masse, it may disturb their natural habits (and habitats). Not to mention the much more hefty airplanes--the computerized regulation system inherent to each car would need to take into account not only the other flying cars around the car but the large planes above it.

Such fanciful concepts are appealing. But of course this only scratches the surface. Who knows where we'll be even 15 years from now?