Flying cars, and other nonsense

Flying Cars, and other nonsense

I saw this story on my Yahoo page this morning, and I felt the tension creeping in.

Flying Cars?!?!?!!???!!?!!??!?

See, apparently we're still looking to the future when everybody has flying cars, Jetsons or Back to the Future style. Story says (in a most disappointed tone), that although NASA and Boeing say the technology is there, we are still many, many years away from the day we all have flying cars.

Now, I've got no problem with the idea of a flying car. I've been stuck in a traffic jam just like the rest of you, and thought about just how wonderful it would be to be able to lift out of the traffic jam harrier-style, and fly beyond the madness.

But am I the only one who sees the problem with this idea?

See, if you've got a flying car, that's great.

But it's great only if you're the only one with the flying car.

If the day comes that Average Joe can own his flying car...the problem is that every other Average Joe in the world will own a flying car.

I'm convinced that anywhere between a fifth and a full-on third of the drivers we have driving your standard ground-based automobiles nowadays aren't completely competent to handle their machines. Not in any kind of responsible manner. Look around you the next time you're out driving, and look at the people who do the little annoying things, like not signalling turns, like refusing to turn right on red even though there's an empty spot the size of Nebraska in the road, or like talking on the cell phone not realizing that they've become so involved with their conversation that they're going 11 miles per hour.

And when you're done with these guys, look at the jagoffs who do the stuff that makes you really psychotically angry. People who do stuff like backing up an entire parking lot for days on end just so that they can turn left out of the parking lot across four lanes of traffic. Or how about those who take it upon themselves to slow everybody in the passing lane of the interstate down by driving 68 in that left hand lane?

Have you ever noticed the number of those cars who drive slowly in that left lane who have that Jesus fish on them? The Jesus fish, or some other manner of religious paraphanelia? It's not a 100% across the board number, but the ratio is up around 4 to 1.

But that's neither here nor there....

Back to my little rant, also, when you're out driving and looking at these colossal boneheads, look at the number of cars you see broken down along side the road. Especially if you're driving on the interstates or freeways. There are two reasons for these breakdowns: Poor craftsmanship, and poor upkeep.

Some cars are just lemons. You get a huge number of moving parts working in conjunction, and if one's out of whack right off the lot, then another is going to start messing up, and another, and another. Even new, the car's constantly breaking down. I figure that if you've got a flying car, you're going to have half again at least as many moving parts as your every day land-based car. And probably more. More to go wrong, in my book.

And then there's the problem of upkeep. There are a lot of cars out there that because of age, or the financial trappings of the driver, or just the sheer negligance of the owner, that are liable to fall apart at any moment.

Now, it's one thing to have these accidents-waiting-to-happen driving around on the road. They break down? You pull them off to the side of the road. And if they cause an accident, the chances are slim that they'll do anything more than take out another car or two.

However, if you've got a Flying P.O.S. out there flying around when its wings suddenly fly off because Jimmy Joe Cottontongue forgot to change the hydraulic fluid, you've suddenly got a missile hurtling towards a random target somewhere on the ground below.

Personally, I'd rather not be sitting down to watch Seinfeld re-runs on the holovid and have a 2038 Mercedvrolet Flymobile crash down on my head, crushing me, the holovid and my Soylent Green Cheetoes in one fell swoop, all because Jimmy Joe couldn't be bothered to put more than 11,000 Astrobucks worth of plutonium in the flux capacitor.

Well, I've written more on this than I would have thought.

Heed my words. When somebody tells you that flying cars are such a long way away, you say "Good." And then you buy more Soylent Green Cheetoes.