Why ban magic carpet despite it comes with certified safety belt?

Question

With effect from today any kind of magic carpet regardless of model and brand are banned nation wide, statistic shows that for the past couple of months alone there have been 3 fatalities resulting from misusing the carpet and hundreds more suffers serious and minor injuries. The problem is there are 10 millions riders using magic carpet as main mode of transportation so the numbers clearly cannot be the cause of panic, so what could be the reason to ban magic carpet?

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Answer 1

They weren't deliberately banned

but rather they fell down a crack in the legislation that means they're not covered by other regulations. They're not aircraft because they're too low and too slow. They're not automobiles because they fly. They could be classed as helicopters but they don't pass the rules regarding rotor safety.

If you think that's unreasonable, the UK has a similar problem with Light Electric Vehicles, Segways, hoverboards, electric scooters, etc. They're not allowed on the road and they're not allowed on the sidewalks. They're not of themselves illegal, you're just not allowed to use them anywhere because they don't meet any of the legislation for those uses.

Answer 2

1) Too many people throw trash from flying carpets

It is bad enough that car drivers throw trash out their windows at roadside; imagine millions of carpet flyers getting rid of trash by throwing it over the side. This accumulates in gardens and on rooftops as well as in streets and parks. It can also prove a safety hazard - getting hit by a half-empty plastic bottle falling from a hundred yards up will hurt, and paper can latch onto the wind shields of cars, distracting drivers. Campaigns to reduce this nuisance has failed, so now a ban on carpet flying has come into place.

2) Too many voyeurs

Flying carpets have been used to peer through bedroom windows in high rises and ogling women sunbathing naked in the perceived privacy of their gardens. People also habitually fly over the private gardens and parks of rich people who value their privacy. Again, no matter of campaigns have mitigated this problem. This contributes to the decision of banning them.

3) The oil lobby

Flying carpets run on magic; they run on animal sacrifice or some such, not on gas or diesel. This irks Big Oil, who has lobbyed against flying carpets for a long time. They may have persuaded animal activists that killing animals for fuel is animal abuse, and they have financed anti-carpet campaigns and saturated the news channels they own with negative stories.

Answer 3

Health hazard.

There are other things which did their jobs very well but were banned because they were health hazards. Carbon tetrachloride was a phenomenal stain remover and good for other things, but caused liver toxicity. Benzene was a useful gasoline additive but caused cancer.

Flying carpets are useful and fun but with repeated use they cause health problems for the users. These hazards can be devised by the writer - maybe some cumulative magical side effect on the user of the magics that make the carpets fly. Magical side effect would be more fun than having carpets cause cancer or kidney failure.

Answer 4

Safety belts aren't a safety feature in an open transport. For the same reasons we don't have safety belts on motorbikes. Pretty much the only thing worse than getting thrown from your bike when it crashes, is being tied to it as it hurls along the ground at 100km/h.

So I assume they would be banned because they aren't safe, and no amount of safety belts is going to improve that.

Answer 5

The magic used to power them is unethical.

e.g. it was discovered it draws from the souls of babies or something. Or else the left-over faerie dust emitted from the things as they are flying is causing untold damage to the atmosphere, or falling on the people below and is detrimental to their mental health.

Answer 6

Safety Hazard in the form of Suicide Drivers

Normal cars are pretty dangerous themselves, but imagine someone with the ability to fly and crash very heavy and dangerous objects into places. (Or don't and do a Google search on terrorist activities using airplanes.) The magic carpet represents the ability to instantly achieve a powerful aerial speed, and when you have a few dozen people working in tandem that could be very dangerous.

Answer 7

Safety isn't the problem, privacy is. But the influential people who fear being spied upon by flying-carpet riders don't want to expose their true concern, so they quietly arrange a safety worry campaign. As you note, the fatality numbers don't seem to add up to a real threat. (Or it could be like automobiles in the real world, responsible for actually quite large numbers of deaths for people both in/on the vehicle and outside the vehicle, yet the populace does not seem bothered by it until there's an "awareness-raising" program.)

Since this is a false scare campaign, the creators would add in extra spurious safety concerns, however rare, with viral misleading images and videos:

1. items accidentally or maliciously dropped from flying carpets harming innocent people below - falling on them or starting forest fires.
2. persons falling overboard in open water (or miles up) and having virtually no hope of rescue before their grisly death.
3. riders traveling unprepared to locations they lack environmental protection for, e.g. space.
4. accidental, uncommanded, or unauthorized flight of carpets, a hazard for everyone involved, and especially likely to affect people emotionally if a small child takes off on one (or a medium child does so with one or more smaller siblings).
5. contraband smuggling; police have no chance of catching drug-runners moving at nearly orbital speeds with the wave of a hand.
6. counterfeit-quality carpets which stop working mid-flight.

But underneath it all, the primary concern is certain people don't want someone seeing what they're doing in their palatial back yards (or outdoor business parks), and while those people had the situation under control regarding satellites, helicopters, light aircraft, and model aircraft / drones, they're afraid they won't be able to control flying carpets if they become popular.