this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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People have enough trouble driving on roads, which place at least some limits on what you can do with a vehicle. Give them a flying car with no limits on where they can go anywhere in the X, Y, and Z axes and all hell will break loose. This crash, with two experienced "drivers", is a perfect example, and they ostensibly knew what they were doing.
I think if they become a thing people won't directly control them. Instead they will fly autonomously.
It's way easier to make something fly itself than drive itself
That's not entirely true...
The thing is, for something to really be a "flying car" you need to be able to park it at home. That means you need to be able to fly it around a whole lot of hazards, buildings, trees, telephone poles, unpredictable children. Yes, a modern autopilot can take off, fly a route and land all by itself, but the airfields they're taking off and landing at have none of those hazards I just mentioned as well as air traffic controllers in the tower watching out for problems.
That said, I do think autonomous control is absolutely the way to get there. Just don't assume it'll be easy. We should still master self-driving on land first before we start applying it to personal aircraft.