Well, that was fun! I mean, clicking into this New York Times story about flying cars (I said to the digital Times, “What?”) and seeing one of them take off in front of my eyes.
So I skimmed through the story until I came to these paragraphs:
BlackFly is what is often called a flying car. Engineers and entrepreneurs like Mr. Leng have spent more than a decade nurturing this new breed of aircraft, electric vehicles that can take off and land without a runway.
But not without a parking spaces. Anyone figured this out yet? Right now, down in my New York City streets, we’ve got car owners fighting over parking places. If your flying cars are bigger than SmartCars, well…
They believe these vehicles will be cheaper and safer than helicopters, providing practically anyone with the means of speeding above crowded streets.
“Our dream is to free the world from traffic,” said Sebastian Thrun, another engineer at the heart of this movement.
Excuse me, Mr. Thrun. You may be “freeing the world from traffic” on the streets but I’m trying to work out how you’ll be avoiding traffic in the air above my streets.
Is someone going to be designing invisible lanes for these flying cars? One way, two way?
What are you going to call grid lock when it applies to flying cars? Why would you think there won’t be grid lock with flying cars?
I really loved Bruce Willis moving his flying taxicab through the air in The Fifth Element. But that was imaginative fiction. I’m already grim imagining real flying cars in fender benders as they try to move above 59th Street.