The future of transport is going to look radically different than what it is today but that is an obvious fact I guess. We already know about the transition from horses to cars even though some people were highly skeptical back then about it.

Today, when we talk about future transportation systems, we imagine autonomous cars where we don't have to do anything except get in and get out. We imagine electric planes capable of supersonic flight, hyperloop systems travelling at speeds that airplanes do today. Basically, the world is going to be an even smaller place as it should be.

One other thing that is mentioned quite a bit is the idea of flying cars. If you've seen a science fiction movie, you might have seen how they portray them so casually, flying around in fixed 'air lanes', criss-crossing each other in the sky, while the ground based vehicles have a traffic of their own.

Flying cars are being developed by several start ups and research teams all around the world and every now and then we get to hear of a successful test flight. But can they really become as real and as normal as cars of today?

Flying Cars or Flying Deaths?

When you look into the concept of flying cars, some drawbacks are immediately obvious. First of all, there would be hundreds or thousands of cars above our heads at all time. If one fails, it would tumble out of the sky and fall to the ground. This would not only be fatal for the people inside but also for any person the car would fall on. It could also cause great damage to property.

No matter how safe manufacturers make them, machines are always prone to failure. On ground, a car simply stops or hits something and the driver still has a chance to survive. If the same happens in the air, the chances of survival would be close to zero.

Another main issue would be that of noise. We have all heard those noisy drones and just how much sound and air flow one can produce even though they are so tiny. Multiply that to the size of a car and then imagine how much sound and air flow there would be.

It would be very disruptive for the surrounding people and homes, to a point where continuous flying and landing of those cars would come in the way of normal lifestyle.

Also, a flying car would take too much energy as it takes a lot to beat gravity. Rolling on the road takes just a fraction of that. We definitely need less usage, not more. It would also mean overhauling of driving licenses and people would need to go through training, if these things aren't made autonomous.

All these issues make flying cars, a distant dream right now, even though a lot of people seem to be working hard to make them real. I remember what Elon Musk said about flying cars, "If you want a flying car, just put wheels on a helicopter."