One of the notions long held by people throughout the 20th century was, whether the future brings a post-apocalyptic anarchy or homogenous peacenik society where everyone apparently shops at the same aluminium jumpsuit thrift store, one thing was for absolute certain: all cars would fly. This notion is, inherently, fucking stupid.
See, I could do a whole blog post about the many things that either science fiction or the general populace has imagined the "future" would bring and how inane these predictions/aspirations are. But it's really the flying car aspect that can be written about at length, mainly because I can muse on it in a comical fashion, whereas positing about the pros and cons of a world united under one thought process, one government, one language and one clothing style, for better or for worse, can get quite depressing. So let's talk about airborne Dodge Caravans instead.
Here are some of the impractical aspects of flying commercially available vehicles. First off, modern man has barely mastered the art of plying a 2 ton hunk of mobile killing machine on paved roads, sober or otherwise, much less be considered for a piloting license (sober or otherwise), so why the hell would we ever grant ourselves the right to ply said death carts up in the sky? You think insurance rates are high now, wait till you have every happy asshole with a license claiming he's a "wicked in control and not pussed out on just 3 beers" drunk and perfectly willing to get behind the wheel, climb up to the mesosphere, then spiral his airborne hearse right into your backyard while you're drunk in the wading pool. Or better yet, North Korea. Somehow.
Routing traffic will be nothing short of a nightmare. You think assholes cutting into the emergency lane during rush hour or following in the wake of an ambulance/fire truck is bad? Imagine that same jam-packed line of cars, but this time in the sky, when Mr Asshole just decides, hey, I can just fly up or below the line of cars and then speed ahead of the rest! Before anyone reading this goes "But that would be illegal!" then I'd have to say, neither is pulling any of those stunts on terra firma, but it still happens with alarming frequency. Now imagine even more cars trying to pull the same trick, until the entire line either shifts up or down, depending on how everyone's feeling at that time. More aerial accidents, followed by thousand pound packages of metal falling out of the sky into the waiting arms of blind orphans whose parents died in flying car accidents.
What always irked me about films showing cars zipping around cities, only about 20-30 feet off the ground, was that NO city, not even those crazy ones in Europe, would ever in their right minds zone flying traffic anywhere near buildings. Unless we live in some sort of wacked out future where everyone is Han Solo (and I assure you, we will not) and are ridiculously good pilots even in the most junktastic of flying cars, there is no way city officials will allow cars to be in a position to crash into a building anywhere above the first floor. Let's face it, anyone who's of any value to a business will always be in the 5th floor or higher, so cities would always do their best to protect them. Them, and snooty loft owners.
Getting car-jacked would be a fucked up, if not interesting experience. You'd still get the same class of cracked out desperados, only this time with jetpacks fashioned out of lava lamps and fire extinguishers, and this time, when they throw you out of the car, there's nowhere else left to go but down. The dude's created a jetpack out of questionable materials which are quickly melting away his pants, so I'm sure he won't consider your safe landing to be any sort of priority. Down you go.
So on and so on. It's a cool thing to think about surely - but god knows WHY anyone would actually want to be in a flying car. Terrestrial cars are far from perfect and still get shit for mileage, and humanity has yet to warm up to the idea of alternative fuel and the manufacture of cars that run on them, much less design cars that could conceivably reach escape velocity with a host of fratboys in tow. I'd say flying cars are best left to the movies and hopefully no self respecting scientist or researcher at a car manufacturer would ever entertain the thought of this horrible pipe dream.
