The flying car has been kind of the default dream of the future for a while now. People lament that our technology can't have come all that far, if our cars aren't air born. Sure I've thought about it. Just this weekend I was caught in traffic on a three lane highway, gazing into the open sky, just wishing I could mystically take off and whisk myself through the clouds leaving my troubles behind on Terra-firma. But then I looked over and saw a fat guy eating a sandwich rear-end a minivan full of kids at low speed, and it made me realize how bad an idea that is.

It's safe to say that we as a culture have not mastered driving in general. Since the early 1900's everyone has had enough time to impart how serious a responsibility driving is to their kids, yet we still have the same types of assholes, inattentive pricks, and old people peeling around the USA. Perhaps we can't separate ourselves enough for driving to matter more, on average here in the US we get about 6.2 million accidents a year killing more than 40k. Dealing with accident related traffic is just a fact of life now, mainly because people are stupid and we accept this.

This orphanage was perfectly functional a few minutes ago.

Imagine a regular collision on a highway or major thoroughfare, two or three cars have some good impact dents, one person needs medical attention, maybe they took out a telephone pole, possibly a storefront or lets say a fruit stand. Now take that regular accident, and add the flight variable. Flying + Stupid = Disaster.

All of a sudden its not just city streets and other cars that are in danger, everything from every angle is cast into a nightmare scenario. 20th floors of office buildings exploding into flame and wreckage when a soccer mom loses control of her over-sized SUV. Factory smokestacks and power lines getting destroyed all over the country by a girl on a cellphone trying to plug in her iPod and accidentally going into a snap roll. Baseball stadiums being evacuated on reports of the elderly in the area. Entire power grids going offline from old Chinese women colliding with power plants that, in their words "came out of nowhere." If the cars were introduced quickly to the public then Florida would almost shut down overnight, the landscape would be littered with smoldering Air-Cadillac husks with their sky blinkers still firing, that fell out of flight in the wrong lane.

Two of the more Jeriatric horsemen of the aerial vehicle apocalpyse. The equivalent of pestilence and famine to driving: Glaucoma and Doesn't care anymore.

Corner offices aren't so popular in office buildings, top floors of apartments become unrentable for landlords, buildings need to be zoned lower, trees now are only allowed a maximum height inside city limits. Only the super rich would be able to afford having flechette dispensing systems or incredibly large magnets installed to keep their property safe, and even then there's only so many "guy who fell asleep at the wheel" or "drunk driver" vehicles the flechette systems can obliterate mid-flight. (Though it must be kinda cool to see shards of spent uranium sprayed into the air, completely atomizing everything it touches.)

On the plus side most of these idiots who get into the same types of accidents, hit and run, repeat fender bender, multiple dui, won't survive these new types of crashes. You only get one chance in the skies. This might make you think "hey if idiots keep killing themselves, we won't have anymore!" Let me remind you that idiots as an organization have been in operation longer than the art of prostitution, and they aren't going anywhere. The sky will not only claim the stupid, but will judge all harshly. Mid-air collisions aren't a thing to joke about, the twisted wreckage raining from the sky will make sure of that, and if you thought gas was already expensive just wait until you see the bill for regular fill ups of low grade rocket fuel.

Nascar will still suck, just faster and at greater altitude. However hicks will remain mesmerized by the sport, because after all hicks pioneer their own kind of stupid everyday, and why shouldn't they? They have an American right to pretend to enjoy one of the most boring, wasteful, and pointless activities this century.

Think how cool your ride could be pimped now. Even if the new types of flying cars kill 5 times as many people, it's only going to take a few rap stars, a couple movies and one catchy TV ad to send the world into a frenzy of purchasing. Insurance companies can become even corrupter (is that a word? If it isn't they should have a picture of an insurance company under it) as they find new and interesting coverage plans to cover people in these new aerial death traps. Public works funds will have to be redrawn as they hadn't planned on people regularly destroying dams, water towers, causeways, and the tops of malls.

There are a bag of reasons you don't want to be "air-judged."

The police and highway patrol will have to evolve very quickly to adapt to the new face of criminals, speeding into the skies to make his escape. How do you capture a criminal alive when he's going 230mph at 7,000 feet? You can't. We would need a new Judge Dredd type law enforcement system where if the crime is bad enough, the officer has the option, or in this case, the duty, to "Judge" them down with an air-to-air missile.

But on the upswing for crime rates, car-jackings would go down dramatically, and rubber necking traffic jams would be a thing of the past. There would no longer be multiple car pileups either. One car hits another, and that's it, they're out of your way when they fall 3,000 feet and go through the roof of a hospital.

Knowing me, I wouldn't have the time or the money to take care of my flying car, and in a blatant disregard for those around me could plunge out of the air at any time and take out a school or gas station because I didn't get a sky-oil change. I might have weighed the dangers, but hell, flying shaves 15 minutes off my commute, and it's so cool.

Essentially, we are looking at irreparably altering the face of our entire country, much like the ugly tree did to kids by hanging hot bags of nickels on itself. If flying cars became popular it would essentially be a mix of the worst parts of "The Fast and the Furious" (all of it) and 9/11 - every day.