The weight of a car is an excellent kinetic energy weapon. Fly over soft target, detonate something on-board to disable safety features and you have the poor-man(terrorist?)'s remote-kill drone.
Makes driving trucks into crowded streets look positively medieval.
The danger of this far outweighs any possible benefits.
Flying cars will become a thing, but stay heavily regulated and a rich-person's toy.
Loss of multiple rotors is perfectly manageable.
Add variable pitch blades and you get autorotation ability to handle total power loss.
Worrying about the threats posed is silly. A truck driven by a maniac still can do far more damage. No one is proposing a truck ban.
A 'flying car' is heavy enough to do large amounts damage just by falling out of the sky. Doesn't have to have anyone riding in it to blow themselves up at the right time, a cell-phone triggered bomb will do just as well.
Molotov cocktail delivery vehicle? Why not? Requires a remote control lighter and remote release. How about dropping steel rebar? Needs tail fins for directional stability and some testing but that would be plenty troublesome. Drone mounted pistols are already here. (YouTube them.)
And yet the skies are considered safe enough today. I just think there are bigger concerns out there.
The only practical option is independent dual redundant power systems so that one failure can't take out more than half the propellers. Plus a rocket assisted ballistic recovery parachute to allow a (mostly) survivable crash landing in case of a catastrophic failure. Of course there will still be some rare failure modes where a parachute won't be sufficient.
3rd answer down :)
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/37360/can-a-pas...
Rotor system inertia is incredibly important in autorotation, and this fact will pretty much make autorotation in quad+-rotor aircraft a no-go.
The only option here is a ballistic parachute / BRS, and personally that's not a system I'd stake my life on.
After all such cars will have to be self-flying. You're surely not suggesting the flying car using public would need to get a pilots license before flying in one ? That would already mean they're only a rich persons toy.
If the target is big enough (sports stadium for example) you.dont need to aim it. And as to why use a flying car instead of going there, I would have thought that was obvious. You can drop a car on people from a distance. Don't need to be there.
I guess I don't feel that this will be the reason flying cars aren't adopted. In my mind, the barriers are almost entirely economics.
It's worth mentioning also that there seems to be a plan to have pilots for these programs in the near term. Take a look at Uber's Elevate concept video, there's a pilot on-board.
First, these cars would be easy targets for AA batteries. I would have to assume thst getting to close to a stadium full of people in one would lead to a shoot down, or remote shutdown.
Second, why bombs? What you can pack into a small aircraft is not the makings of a really impressive bomb, unless you have military grade high explosives. Now on the other hand, you could pack loads of nerve agents, chlorine, vessicants, or biological agents into one.
Third, you’d have to know enough about the hardware and software to modify it to fly empty, and violate restricted airspace. That might be a hell of a barrier to entry.
Fourth, these things could be heavily networked to function, so a rogue taxi could be taken over remotely, because it’s already remotely controlled.
Fifth, does the FBI care why you’re building a bomb or milling anthrax? Whatever your delivery system, they’re monitoring precursors and equipment you’d need. Air taxi, truck, drone, dudes with backpacks... the delivery system isn’t the chokepoint.
The killer combination is self-flying cars (which as I said will be a prerequisite for mass adoption). No one needs ride it for it to be a weapon, unlike a helicopter.
and
FAR §135.125 Aircraft security. Certificate holders conducting operators conducting operations under this part must comply with the applicable security requirements in 49 CFR chapter XII.
The first applies to all flights, the second applies to air taxi flights. Equivalents for flying taxis are indicated, but it's a whole separate paradigm. Who is the pilot in command of an autonomous flying taxi? That has very clear implications today with human pilots. It's really vague what that thing is in a pilotless paradigm.
There's probably a distinction between rides with strangers and rides with friends and family. If I know everyone in my flying taxi, that's probably more like a FAR 91 flight, and maybe it's sane to have a minimal security paradigm. If there are strangers on the flight, that's trending toward FAR 135 requirement.
Our current 'arrive two hours early' security screening has cost many lives simply because it tilts the drive/fly equation towards driving, which is dramatically more dangerous.
That said, you are probably right about the net effect.
This. Considering about 800 million passengers per year in US, that's 800 million extra hours of awake human that the additional hour to handle security requirements suck up. Considering a 79 year lifespan per human (totaling 461360 awake hours), that's around 1734 human lives wasted per year in US. 9/11 only killed 2996 people, of average age 40, so roughtly could be said that the extra hour of airport security in US costs a 9/11 every year. (I'll admit, maybe people having a friendly chat in the secutiry line or otherwise enjoy the extra time in the airport terminal, so not exactly apples-to-apples comparison).