if there was literally one reason to have a flying car
I'll give two: reduce traffic jams, and less need to build/maintain roads. The average commute time* is about an hour a day. Giving people back that time to spend with their family, to work, to play would be an amazing boon to society. The real issue is that the technology to make practical (cheap, fast, quiet, safe) flying cars doesn't exist. A practical flying car would also solve the housing price crisis in cities as people could fly in from the exurbs.
> A practical flying car would also solve the housing price crisis in cities as people could fly in from the exurbs.
Doesn't this just reinvent the problem? You're currently spending a long time commuting due to congestion; you'll now spend a long time commuting due to sheer distance.
People are already driving from the exurbs, so a 2 hour commute from Pittsburg, CA to Downtown San Francisco (30 miles) would drop to 15 minutes in a car flying at 120mph. That's better than a typical intra SF commute. If you look at a 30 mile radius it is a tremendous area for living potential.
If we had the ability for humans to safely pilot a flying car at 120mph, we'd have the ability for humans to safely pilot a on-the-ground car at 120mph.
All the traffic collisions that currently happen in 2 dimensions (changing lanes without looking, failure to yield, rear-end collisions) would happen with flying cars but now in three dimensions. And when a collision happens that completely disables the car, it won't just crash in two dimensions, it will plummet to the ground.
To prevent that, we'd need dedicated air lanes that cars would have to merge in and out of, and on-ramps where they're only allowed to move up or down at dedicated spots to help with merging. Which we have on the ground already.
Yes planes fly fast. They're also piloted by professionals who dedicate their lives to piloting them, controlled by a central ATC tower, and heavily regulated by a governing body. And we still have air disasters.
There is zero reason to move cars into a third dimension of travel. If you want "cars but faster", we have a solution for that: cars. But faster.
I don't get your argument. Humans can safely pilot airplanes at 600 mph, but clearly cannot do this safely on the ground. The difference is density. Cars routinely travel only a meter apart on highways, but because there's a lot more space in the air, planes maintain minimum separation of hundreds of meters.
Ships, also driven by professionals, collide more frequently than airplanes for the same reason.
Another important reason to go 3D is that you can go much faster with less fuel at high altitude.
I'll give two: reduce traffic jams, and less need to build/maintain roads. The average commute time* is about an hour a day. Giving people back that time to spend with their family, to work, to play would be an amazing boon to society. The real issue is that the technology to make practical (cheap, fast, quiet, safe) flying cars doesn't exist. A practical flying car would also solve the housing price crisis in cities as people could fly in from the exurbs.
* https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/650061560/stuck-in-traffic-yo...