[khrbrt]

Forget flying cars -- a 50's consumerist fantasy. I'm begging for basics like safe bike lanes, fast public transit and cheap high speed rail.

> It’s often remarked upon, in boosterish circles, that American society allows about forty thousand road fatalities a year but refuses to tolerate even one aviation death.

We shouldn't tolerate that either!

[baxtr]

I fear this is a psychological issue: plane crashes involve many fatalities in one single event. People take notice and are scared.

But, people don’t care so much about a “small” car or even a “small” plane crash. Even if they add up to an insane number as high as 40k per year!

[Elyra]

It's the exact same issue with nuclear power vs fossil fuels.

[iancmceachern]

Plus one for bike lanes!!

[nox101]

You can demand perfection in planes. That will likely raise their price and operating costs. in which case more people will drive causing more, not less deaths.

That isn't to say we shouldn't always try to make them safer. But if you put every passenger in a pod like the president in "Escape from New York" you'll make planes safer and still cause more death

[bluGill]

Planes have spent nearly 100 years moving from the "cowboy" era with brave "men" risking their lives to the modern era where planes are one of the safest ways to get around. They did they by analyzing every accident and near miss and figuring out how to ensure that doesn't happen again. Car owners resit the idea that they are not perfect even while they do things like use the phone while driving, drink alcohol just before driving tailgate, speed, stop in the crosswalk, and so on. Those are the things that either have been taught in driving ed for decades, or have had large media pushes to raise awareness. Don't get me started counterintuitive on things like the zipper merge which most people think I'm the bad driver for doing. I'll admit that the above is a list of things I know about and attempt to do - I have no idea what else I might be missing.

We now have the technology to have very realistic driving simulators. (I've seen what they give snow plow drivers) We should require drivers spend several days per year in a simulator to make sure that they can do things right in the weird situations. Pilots rarely fly in the worst weather (they will fly above, around or stay on the ground - though they will fly through what looks like bad but isn't - I don't know how to tell the difference), but they get lots of simulator time in the worst case situations.

[dangus]

And yet, in most years, the American commercial aviation industry achieves perfection.

I think we can demand the same from cars, or at least something better than 30,000 deaths per year.

[boringg]

There are significantly more drivers than pilots and are much less regulated - i.e. capability. More interactions in driving then airplanes - more traffic. Much higher probability of collision or issues. Flying has more complexity for the most part but also has a high degree of automation.

[dangus]

At the same time we can also admit that a number of factors could use a huge amount of improvement in the United States. We have long list of inexpensive low hanging fruit.

- Licensing and renewal requirements are extremely lax

- Many states have extremely lenient DUI punishments

- Road conditions and design are often extremely lacking (e.g., stroads with high speed and high conflict points make up an outsized proportion of fatalities, there could be more emphasis on traffic calming than traffic flow and high average speed).

- Lack of safer alternatives (e.g. public transit) despite generally having the population numbers and density to support robust public transit.

- Too many safety loopholes for popular passenger trucks where the differences in regulations were intended to accommodate commercial activity with professional drivers, but the market has shifted to regular consumers driving large heavy vehicles with poor pedestrian safety like full size pickup trucks.

[staplers]

Ain't happening while manual driving exists. Street racing and road rage are real problems and only got worse during/after covid.

[trgn]

More bollards, trees. Drive like a maniac, crash into a bollard.

[ben_w]

I want flying emergency services, but that's purely driven by how the random sirens at all hours of the day and night mean that can't concentrate or get good sleep in my current apartment on the corner of a major junction of a busy road with regular long queues.

(It was fine when I moved in… all the roads were empty due to the pandemic).

[jijijijij]

I really, really want flying cars tho. However, lame rebranding of helicopters and planes doesn't qualify. Until we got some scifi antigravity levitation stuff, let's do the solar punk aesthetics and not waste energy punching air.

[AlwaysRock]

Flying cars rely on technical innovation to happen. The other things you mentioned are possible now but rely on social support and political change to happen. I bet we see flying cars before any of those things (in the usa at least).

[aceazzameen]

Sadly, you're probably correct.

[aidenn0]

My daughter just took her driver's test so I learned that in California it's legal for cars to park in bike lanes.

[settsu]

If driving was more like flying, I'd imagine fatalities could be significantly reduced.

[aetherson]

Bikes: a desperate demand for society to subsidize the hobby of high-status individuals.

Why should we allocate scarce infrastructure land for marginal increases in bike-lanes (that are chronically under-used), for perhaps uniquely the worst form of transit?

If someone told you that they wanted you to provision funding/space for a new form of transit that was:

* Slow/short range

* Impractical in all but basically nice weather

* Requires parking

* Not family-friendly

* Not friendly for the elderly or anyone who is disabled to almost any definition of "disabled"

* Unsafe

* Has low to no cargo capacity

You'd call them crazy. But somehow we've got the meme that bikes are good.

[trgn]

Bikes and cars can coexist. It's not one or the other.

Just visited philadelphia. Used to be clogged with cars. Now it's still clogged with cars. But also has great new bike infrastructure with lots of bikers (that weren't there 15 years ago)

The city is better for it, more mobility options, less noisy, less degraded. So awesome!