It\u2019s Bullitt meets Christine meets Waymo.<\/p>\n
A new short film imagines a San Francisco car chase where the other driver isn\u2019t human \u2014 and the car may be trying to kill you. That a robotaxi can now be cast as the villain with almost no explanation says something about the present moment. Autonomous cars have gone from sci-fi curiosities to fixtures in some American cities, where they\u2019ve become stand-ins<\/a> for anxieties about AI job displacement, Big Tech surveillance, and machines making decisions once left to humans.<\/p>\n Road Rage<\/a>, the planned short film awaiting $40,000 on Kickstarter to fund production, leans into all of it. The film pits Joa, a ridehail driver in a manual-transmission car, against Roboride, an autonomous vehicle that takes a minor road-rage incident very personally, according to a synopsis by its director, Romain Thomassin. Roboride lightly clips Joa\u2019s mirror. Joa gives it the finger. The car decides to kill him.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s analog versus artificial,\u201d Thomassin told The Verge.<\/p>\n The AI bad guy will be played by an old Prius transformed with cold LED lights across the front \u2014 \u00e0 la Tesla \u2014 fake cameras, a spinning lidar-like device on the roof, a black exterior, and a menacing, ever-blinking red dot. Thomassin calls the intended result a \u201cnasty Waymo.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI really wanted to play the nasty, gritty look of the \u201970s car chase, but with today\u2019s robotaxi in today\u2019s San Francisco,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The chase itself will be a throwback: real cars, real actors, and real stunts.<\/p>\n \u201cI really wanted to play the nasty, gritty look of the \u201970s car chase, but with today\u2019s robotaxi in today\u2019s San Francisco.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Road Rage director Romain Thomassin<\/p>\n \u201cWhat makes Joa the good guy is not only his instinct but also his authenticity,\u201d Thomassin said, noting a scene in which the character has an unexpected conversation with his passengers. \u201cThis type of human interaction doesn\u2019t happen in a robotaxi.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomassin doesn\u2019t actually think robotaxis are inherently evil. But as a movie villain, they come preloaded with tension. For one thing, they\u2019re replacing the kind of worker his protagonist represents. Joa is a Mexican immigrant trying to make a living driving in an increasingly expensive San Francisco. Robotaxis are already competing with ridehail drivers<\/a>, just as generative AI is competing with workers in Thomassin\u2019s own industry.<\/p>\n \u201cDriving here is a metaphor for what\u2019s happening in cinema, in filmmaking,\u201d Thomassin said.<\/p>\n 1\/4<\/strong>Guerilla posters for Road Rage. Image: Grace Vincent \/ Road Rage<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s surveillance. Autonomous cars are covered in cameras and sensors, constantly observing the streets \u2014 and people \u2014 around them. That, more than the prospect of being driven around without a human behind the wheel, is what actually unnerves Thomassin.<\/p>\n In Road Rage, that anxiety is pushed toward dystopia. There\u2019s a brief encounter involving immigration enforcement, and Thomassin imagines a feature-length version in which autonomous cars identify people, trap passengers inside, or deliver them directly to authorities. The progression, as he describes it, is observation, surveillance, then control.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next step is that [autonomous vehicles] could become the police,\u201d he said. And because robotaxis operate as connected fleets, the threat can scale beyond one vehicle. \u201cImagine an army rising up,\u201d Thomassin said.<\/p>\n