A flying car? Put me down for one!

As I perused the news items of the day, as is my morning routine in order to educate myself on current events and to find things to wax eloquent, I noticed two interesting stories that seemed to contradict the general landscape of where we find ourselves in 2009. The first story I read was about a push from a national advocacy group to recommend that cell phone use in automobiles be banned completely. That means not only hand-held but also hands free types, including bluetooth. The reason for this push is continued evidence that cell phone use while driving is causing more and more accidents, and is now being compared to drunk driving for the lack of ability of drivers to focus on driving while engaged in a cell phone conversation. Now I have to admit that I often drive while talking on my cell phone, I have even sent a text message or two (even more dangerous) but usually this is while at a stoplight or in a traffic jam. While admirable, I think that in reality it will be very hard to enforce this type of law. More and more people will go to Bluetooth devices which are getting smaller and smaller (thus harder to detect) and auto manufacturers are already building hands free cell phone capability into their car audio/visual and GPS devices. How would an officer be able to tell if someone is talking to someone on their hands free car phone device or if they were just talking to themselves or singing along with the song on the radio? The second story I read (with more interest) was a story about a new car being developed, that could change into a plane (within 15 seconds) and fly. Really? A car that could fly? That is really cool! This would be like George Jetson going to work in his little flying capsule thingy. In fact picture looked a lot like Mr. Jetson's flying vehicle. Kind of a cross between a Volkswagen and a Piper Cub! Now this is not something that is going to be coming in 5 or 10 years from now, they have the prototypes now and are in the testing phase, and are scheduled for delivery in 2010. That's next year! In fact, you can go to their website at www.terrafugia.com and place your $10,000 deposit today. For "only" $200,000, you can have one of these little flying machines and starting buzzing around town yourself. So that got me thinking, if people are worried about increased accidents resulting from inattentive drivers talking on their cell phones, what will happen when people start landing their cars on the highways and interstates around the country? What kind of license will you need to have? Well, some more laws will have to change first. According the the article I read, Alaska is the only state where it is legal to take off and land a plane from a highway. Well, since we are in a recession, I doubt too many people will be sending in their deposits for these anytime soon. Except for maybe lottery winners. Yep, now that we are in tough times in America, more and more people are playing the lottery now. That makes sense doesn't it? Sounds like a future blog to me...