• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Low and slow is the most dangerous kind of flying you can do.

    Flying cars are also inevitably less efficient and heavier than a dedicated counterpart, meaning the flight envelope is small, and your aircraft is less responsive.

    (lower power to weight ratio, less efficient use of the lower,)

    Also, any real pilot would be able to explain why flying cars are a bad idea… so they’re probably not all that experienced.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Also, any real pilot would be able to explain why flying cars are a bad idea…

      Every helicopter pilot can explain why helicopters are dangerous. But they’re all still getting up in the morning to collect a paycheck.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Flying cars are, inherently, more dangerous than that.

        Helicopters have loads of systems and design features that minimize the risks- and just to clarify, they’re less likely to be involved in an incident than GA aircraft to begin with. they’re absolute shit at gliding, so a loss of lift results in- at best- a controlled crash- where a plane has time. They’re also more likely to be in the situation where they do not have the altitude or airspeed to glide even if they weren’t dogshit at it, which combine to make them more dangerous to be in an incident with, but still not necessarily “unsafe”.

        Flying cars would be significantly worse than helicopters, as they have the same glide profile, presumably the same propensity for low-and-slow flight regimes; and probably an inability to autorotate as well (depends on the design. most of the ideas I’ve seen lately are some form of multirotor.)

        Though that comment had nothing to do with their inherent lack of safety. It has everything to do with hybridizing land and air vehicles like that never actually works out well. They’re going to be significantly more expensive than either specialized counterpart, less efficient, and less useful. This is why we’ve never seen them come off with commercial success before, and why we’re likely to never see them work, ever. The mechanical nature of something that can both drive on a highway and fly is insanely complex.

        And even with all that, they’re also going to be significantly less safe than helicopters are today, probably spending far more time in the low-and-slow regime which makes incidents dramatically more unsafe, and given the usual argument of “reduces traffic” almost certainly going to be flown in areas with significant human presence (making them more likely to crash into someone.)

        • primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus
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          10 hours ago

          Okay but the only other option for making transportation better and faster is trains–trains are old, and not new, and not shiny.

          So c’mon, let’s all grab our ceremonial daggers and dig out the altar to Moloch…