I wonder what would happen if the car (or something similar had never been invented) and someone came out with a modern saloon today.
"It'll revolutionise personal transport but we estimate it'll kill 40,0000 people in a horrible way per year"
Like many things that are harmful in some way cars got grandfathered in (as did alcohol and tobacco) - if someone came out with an equivalent of alcohol with the same side effects it would be banned immediately as well.
In fact the UK did exactly that with the psychoactive substances laws - we didn't ban a particular drug we banned any drug with a set of side effects - largely because the chemists got really good at tweaking the underlying chemical structure enough to evade the law.
The word you are looking for is pleasure. The only types of drugs that are 100% illegal are drugs that have no purpose besides making you feel pleasurable sensations. Horrible side effects (e.g. chemo) and high chance of addiction (opioids, amphetamines, etc) and more are all allowed as long as the purpose of the effect of the drug is not (solely) pleasure.
Alcohol, and increasingly in some parts of the world Cannabis, are the exceptions (I understand both of these substances have real and potential uses in healthcare, but they are perceived as recreational). These are legal or quasi-legal only because they are both already in wide use and getting society on board to enforce a ban is difficult to impossible (depending on the society, a few do) . Tabacco is also on the list, but seems to be falling off somewhat.
You can throw around statistics but the reality is aircraft receive far more scrutiny. Nobody wants to sit helplessly as one of these things flies them into the side of a skyscraper or watch as one falls out of the sky onto them.
Is that fair? Maybe?
Is that reality? Yes.
This isn't like the invention of cars. We have had all manner of airplanes for over 100 years and know how they work. This is like the NYC helicopter taxi boom in the late 70s and 80s where a number of fiery and high profile crashes put an end to the industry.
One big difference is that these EVTOL aircraft are small enough that they can use ballistic parachutes for an extra degree of safety. They usually also have more redundancy due to distributing thrust between many small electric motors. There has been a lot more research into autonomous drone flight than autonomous helicopter flight as well, which is crucial for safety and keeping costs low. I could be totally wrong, but I feel like battery, motor, flight control, and composite material technologies are finally good enough for EVTOLs to start making sense. Just like the tech boom of the late 90s there will be a lot of investment, most of which will be lost, but the survivors will have a big impact on society.
Maybe. To me, the cost is a bigger factor. If you can show helicopters have the same fatality rate, but has the same price of an Uber, I'm sure a ton of people would use it.
It seems to me price is the larger barrier for most people when it comes to air travel.
Generally speaking, even if cars crash into buildings the building itself is not immediately unsafe; injured people and a broken storefront, but the building is not on fire or collapsing. Unless something has changed dramatically, planes crashing into buildings generally start fires, and generally cause concern about the structural integrity of said building in the immediate aftermath.
> On October 11, 2006, a Cirrus SR20 aircraft crashed into the Belaire Apartments in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, at about 2:42 p.m. EDT (18:42 UTC). The aircraft struck the north side of the building causing a fire in several apartments,[2][3] which was extinguished within two hours.[4]
> Both people aboard the aircraft were killed in the accident: New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle[3] and his certificated flight instructor.[5][6] Twenty-one people were injured, including eleven firefighters. An apartment resident, Ilana Benhuri, who lived in the building with her husband, was hospitalized for a month with severe burns incurred when the post-impact fire engulfed her apartment.[7][8]
> On October 13, 2006, two days after the crash, the FAA banned all fixed-winged aircraft from the East River corridor unless in contact with local air traffic control. The new rule, which took effect immediately, required all small aircraft (with the exception of helicopters and certain seaplanes) to seek the approval of and stay in contact with air traffic control while in the corridor. The FAA cited safety concerns, especially unpredictable winds from between buildings, as the reason for the change.
Most car crashes do not result in 2 dead, 21 injured, and property damage to several residences.
"It'll revolutionise personal transport but we estimate it'll kill 40,0000 people in a horrible way per year"
Like many things that are harmful in some way cars got grandfathered in (as did alcohol and tobacco) - if someone came out with an equivalent of alcohol with the same side effects it would be banned immediately as well.
In fact the UK did exactly that with the psychoactive substances laws - we didn't ban a particular drug we banned any drug with a set of side effects - largely because the chemists got really good at tweaking the underlying chemical structure enough to evade the law.