Keep them grounded

Think about it: Do you really want all the yahoos who cause all those close calls on the roads everyday (including myself) swooping along in an aircar, a threat to life in the skies as well as on the ground?
After many years of trial and error, it looks like hybrid cars and planes are on the verge of becoming a reality, now that a company called Terrafugia has developed the Transition. 
Company representatives told Discovery News that the two-seat vehicle is both road- and airworthy with the inclusion of wings that are folded up on the ground but snap into place for air travel.
As for myself, I feel torn about that announcement — torn between the fantasy of an ordinary individual like myself being able to take to the skies at will and the possible reality of traffic jams and demolition derbies moving from the earth into the realm of the air.
I mean, really, think about all the distracted cell-phone-talking, and sometimes cell-phone-texting, burger-eating, scenery-gawking, travel-weary people who barely miss us on the road each day with their land-bound, two-ton ball of hurtling death? Do we truly feel the need to give them the opportunity to crash their vehicles into the roofs of our houses now?
I don't. 
So, nothing personal against the inventive innovators at Terrafugia, I want to be the first to go on record against this particular kind of progress.
Here's my reasoning:

• Vote of no confidence
Probably the most compelling argument against drivers becoming fliers are the drivers. They provide more than enough anecdotal evidence to prove people shouldn't have aircars.
Soon after I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains years ago, I invited friends from my hometown down to visit.
Unfortunately, one of the most vivid memories my friends have was of this decrepit little old gray-headed lady somehow managing not to get killed when she tested their brakes by pulling right out in front of their van in Carroll County and then her getting lucky again when  they witnessed a tractor-trailer that barely avoided the same grizzled motorist the next day in Galax.
To this day, my friends still ask me about an old woman hazardously careening around the Twin Counties in a little blue Ford. 
God wouldn't even be her co-pilot.
I'm sure that everybody could come up with an example of a driver that would fill them with absolute dread should they have access to a flying car.

• Can't trust it
The one thing you can be certain of in mechanical devices is that eventually they will become an inert piece of non-functioning matter upon which you will regret spending the initial capital investment of $71,685 to get, Hummer owners.
Difficulties such as running out of gas on the ground are often no big deal, but running out of aircar fuel over the deserts of Arizona? Now you're talking vehicle trouble.
And while I'm sure that everybody's favorite pilot, C.B. Sullenberger from U.S. Airways Flight 1549, wouldn't have any trouble gliding a Transition in for a powerless emergency landing over Topeka, I suspect few individuals can match the impressive talents of Sullenberger. 

• More snarge, anyone?
Speaking of Flight 1549, birds would no doubt be on the losing end of widespread public availability of a "GM Strafe" air sedan.
When bird strikes occasionally blind pilots by becoming blobs (or snarge) on windscreens or blow out jet engines — besides being not so good for the avian creatures — that incident could be potentially fatal for whoever's inside the flying machine as well as a great many innocent bystanders along its flight path.
Put more people in the air, especially in craft that depend on jet propulsion... well, it won't just be Canadian geese that go splat.
I know that there can be happy conclusions to those sorts of things, but to underscore what I think about that, please review the preceding comment about the mad skills of pilot Sullenberger.

• The safest way?
Air travel may be the safest way to get there, but that's only because its practitioners aren't flying by the seats of their pants.
I enjoyed "The Jetsons" cartoon as a child, but I have reason to hope that the travel of the future won't be too Jetsonian. 
A flying motorist won't be able to merge into dense traffic in a way that resembles a game of air bumper cars, like an irritated George does on the TV screen.
Air transportation is safer exactly because there are fewer vehicles in the sky than on the ground, and if we expect it to stay that way, we need to keep most motorists grounded.
Sure, it appears that there are real advantages to Terrafugia's Transition, like the 500 miles you could travel on a tank of unleaded gas.
Thankfully, though, this particular aircar is going to be out of reach for most people at $194,000.
Anyway, the flying car is so the 1950's vision of the future.
Can't we just skip the experimental-hybrid-aircraft-plummeting-to-earth phase of transportation and jump straight to the breaking-things-down-to-their-molecules-and-beaming-them-from-point A-to-point B-at-the-speed-of-light eureka moment?
Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.

Next week: Jousting at wind turbines.