I think this comment is reasonable and the replies to this comment are filled with bad takes.
Currently designed Jetpacks don't have brakes, or any safety features really, but that's just a lack of development.
You could easily think of hundreds of safety features that would make Jetpacks in a distant future seem pretty safe, from auto pilot/recovery features, automated object detection and avoidance, body suits with built in airbags, better designed packs that give things like 100x better articulation control, built in parachutes, the list could go on forever really.
Meanwhile cars actually have additional dangerous properties: being stuck in very confined tracks where any other user errors affect you, limited visibility, and a massive amount of heavy metal surrounding you.
I don't see why Jetpacks couldn't be as safe as a cars given they had an equal amount of investment into safety as we see modern cars. And to answer the article as to why they aren't popular, it's pretty easy to see that they just kind of suck as they are now, they need improvements in nearly every dimension.
I think there are a couple of key differences that you’re underplaying.
First, for usage of cars in society, there’s a nice gradual curve where an early slow unreliable car is still somewhat useful, and a faster car is a bit more useful, etc, and that’s what allowed them to get off the ground (as it were). There’s a vastly higher threshold before jetpacks start being usable and useful.
Second, cars are relatively fail-safe in that if you take your foot off the accelerator the car will coast to a halt. Lots of cars can easily come to a safe stop together -- traffic jams are bad but not immediately life-threatening.
Jetpacks aren’t nearly as failsafe because if you stop flying you need to land (or more likely, crash-land).
Planes have the same two advantages over jetpacks, because even a slow or unreliable plane is useful because it can carry cargo; and most planes can glide a bit which helps reduce the risk of crash landings.
Apart from anything else, the minimum viable car was pretty much as safe as modern cars (probably actually harder to kill yourself in the original car with its 10mph top speed), and just as intuitive to operate safely. The safety advances came later to deal mostly with problems which arose later (speed and other cars and boredom from long distance low effort driving)
The reason they are not popular is that we don't have a practical power source. Flight times are measured in minutes. And practical ones that could be used by anyone would be much larger (think VTOL hang glider, not Bobba Fett).
Even with a practical power source, you know have an immense amount of energy stored right next to your body. You need to be able to direct said energy in a safe way. Good luck.
There's only so much airbags can do. Imagine where you would locate those airbags. Cant be pressed against the body either (airbags can cause horrible injuries). Parachutes won't help close to the ground.
Currently designed Jetpacks don't have brakes, or any safety features really, but that's just a lack of development.
You could easily think of hundreds of safety features that would make Jetpacks in a distant future seem pretty safe, from auto pilot/recovery features, automated object detection and avoidance, body suits with built in airbags, better designed packs that give things like 100x better articulation control, built in parachutes, the list could go on forever really.
Meanwhile cars actually have additional dangerous properties: being stuck in very confined tracks where any other user errors affect you, limited visibility, and a massive amount of heavy metal surrounding you.
I don't see why Jetpacks couldn't be as safe as a cars given they had an equal amount of investment into safety as we see modern cars. And to answer the article as to why they aren't popular, it's pretty easy to see that they just kind of suck as they are now, they need improvements in nearly every dimension.