At first if you don't succeed, shelve it.

They let a labeling error kill a project? It's probably better to quit then because of something so small would kill their spirit they were destined to fail, I gues

I guess you can say the test pilot.. ran the project to the ground..

What a terrible excuse to not have flying cars.

I guess it was assumed that if a pilot could make such a trivial mistake, inexperienced drivers would definitely make it too.

I’ll take any excuse not to have them. People can barely drive a car on the ground.

I’ll leave the damn country if we roll them out. All the way to Cuba, in a raft.

Guy gets drunk and flies his car into a telephone pole, it's gonna leave a crater

The chances of the FAA approving an aircraft that also drove on public roads is next to zero.

One of my hobbies is studying General Aviation accidents. It's a weird hobby for someone who has no interest in flying, but I'm fascinated by what brings down airplanes.

Anyhow, what I'm getting at is that the general public will never be ready for flying on a daily basis. The general public has a hard enough time navigating when all they have to modulate is speed and direction along a single axis.

Now add another axis of direction to most idiots on the road? There would be hundreds of these things falling out of the sky and into people's houses and shopping centers every day.

Rather not see r/idiotsinflyingcars. There’d be nsfw/nsfl tags all over the place.

Right, but isn’t the solution to make it more obvious?

He murdered interest.

Most drivers are goddamn morons and respect no rules whatsoever. That's the real reason we don't have flying cars. big difference flying up curbs into walls at 40 mph than into the roofs (rooves?) of houses with children in it at 300mph.

Only when it can take off, obey rules all by itself, with no manual override, will we have flying cars.

because drivers are stupid.

What I'm hearing is that we could all have Jetsons cars, except that Reuben Snodgrass ruined it for everyone. Snodgrass!!!

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It wouldn’t be something everyone could do. I’d say you at least still need your pilots license and there would obviously need to be a lot of restrictions

Isn't this a similar reason we don't have joysticks? I seem to recall there was a concept car that replaced the steering wheel with a joystick, and it was rejected for similar reasons.

They're called helicopters

Never underestimate human stupidity.

Your fool-proof user interface still has one actionnable item ? It's not fool-proof enough.

I've always said flying cars will not be a consideration until our entire automotive and metro system is completely automated. You cannot trust drivers who are now in the air lol.

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As a pilot, flying cars are a terrible idea. It is the worst of both worlds. On top of it, it is entirely environmentally inefficient.

You can't out-idiot the idiots. We've tried.

> no interest in flying, but I'm fascinated by what brings down airplanes

Nothing to see here, FBI.

I work for the DIA, they know exactly where to find me. :D

However, my dream job would be NTSB accident investigator. My lack of aeronautical experience precludes me from that unfortunately.

If you guys are interested in stuff like this look into John Denver’s death. It had to do with crashing a homemade airplane he bought with a very oddly placed fuel selector valve. The valve wasn’t supposed to be there and he was planning on moving it to its specified location. Plus he took off without refueling but that wasn’t a factor. There was a decent amount in it.

He didn’t have his medical because he admitted to a doctor he had 2-4 drinks per week and the FAA found out and revoked his license. He had only flown the plane a few times so he wasn’t used to the fuel selector valve or the plane in general. It was his fault overall though. He basically inadvertently crashed because he pressed the right rudder too far after unbuckling because he had to to reach the valve located to the left above and behind him. This led to a quick loss of control and crash into water not far from land.

This thing?

Same! I grew up watching shows like Air Crash Investigation/Mayday and I still study general aviation accidents today as a hobby as well. /u/admiral_cloudberg writes fantastic reports of it and if there’s one thing in common with these accidents it’s human error. Even simple mistakes such as forgetting to extend flaps, weight balance calculations and blocked sensors would often lead to fatal mistakes; which is why pilots are often trained to stay sharp and follow a set of procedures before resorting to their own judgment.

While I love the idea of flying cars as a little avgeek, as an engineer now I’m just hesitant to embrace the idea let alone thinking of ways to implement it with barely any nuisance to the end user.