Robotaxis enter their villain era

自动驾驶出租车进入“反派时代”

Road Rage is a new short film in production that casts a murderous autonomous car as the bad guy — and taps into everything people already fear about AI on the road. 《路怒症》（Road Rage）是一部正在制作中的新短片，它将一辆杀人成性的自动驾驶汽车塑造成反派角色，并触及了人们对道路上人工智能（AI）的所有恐惧。

It’s Bullitt meets Christine meets Waymo. 这部电影就像是《警网铁金刚》（Bullitt）、《克里斯汀魅力》（Christine）与 Waymo 的结合体。

A new short film imagines a San Francisco car chase where the other driver isn’t human — 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’ve become stand-ins for anxieties about AI job displacement, Big Tech surveillance, and machines making decisions once left to humans. 这部新短片构想了一场发生在旧金山的汽车追逐战，其中另一位司机并非人类，而且这辆车可能正试图杀死你。自动驾驶出租车如今几乎无需解释就能被塑造成反派，这反映了当下的某种现状。自动驾驶汽车已从科幻小说中的奇闻异事变成了美国一些城市的常态，它们成为了人们对 AI 取代工作、大型科技公司监控以及机器取代人类决策等焦虑的代名词。

Road Rage, 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’s mirror. Joa gives it the finger. The car decides to kill him. 《路怒症》这部计划中的短片目前正在 Kickstarter 上筹集 4 万美元的制作资金，它充分利用了上述所有元素。据导演罗曼·托马辛（Romain Thomassin）的剧情梗概，影片讲述了驾驶手动挡汽车的网约车司机乔阿（Joa）与一辆自动驾驶汽车“Roboride”之间的对抗。Roboride 对一次轻微的路怒事件耿耿于怀：Roboride 轻微剐蹭了乔阿的后视镜，乔阿向它竖起了中指，于是这辆车决定杀了他。

“It’s analog versus artificial,” Thomassin told The Verge. “这是模拟与人工智能的对决，”托马辛告诉《The Verge》。

The AI bad guy will be played by an old Prius transformed with cold LED lights across the front — à la Tesla — 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 “nasty Waymo.” 这个 AI 反派将由一辆旧款普锐斯（Prius）改装而成，车头装有类似特斯拉的冷色调 LED 灯、假摄像头、车顶旋转的激光雷达装置、黑色的外观，以及一个不断闪烁、充满威胁感的红点。托马辛将最终效果称为“邪恶版 Waymo”。

“I really wanted to play the nasty, gritty look of the ’70s car chase, but with today’s robotaxi in today’s San Francisco,” he said. “我非常想呈现出 70 年代汽车追逐戏那种粗粝、肮脏的质感，但背景是今天的旧金山和今天的自动驾驶出租车，”他说。

The chase itself will be a throwback: real cars, real actors, and real stunts. 追逐戏本身将采用复古风格：真实的汽车、真实的演员和真实的特技。

“What makes Joa the good guy is not only his instinct but also his authenticity,” Thomassin said, noting a scene in which the character has an unexpected conversation with his passengers. “This type of human interaction doesn’t happen in a robotaxi.” “乔阿之所以是好人，不仅因为他的直觉，还因为他的真实，”托马辛提到片中一个角色与乘客进行意外交谈的场景时说，“这种人与人之间的互动在自动驾驶出租车里是不会发生的。”

Thomassin doesn’t actually think robotaxis are inherently evil. But as a movie villain, they come preloaded with tension. For one thing, they’re 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, just as generative AI is competing with workers in Thomassin’s own industry. 托马辛并不认为自动驾驶出租车本质上是邪恶的。但作为电影反派，它们自带紧张感。首先，它们正在取代他主角所代表的那类劳动者。乔阿是一名墨西哥移民，试图在物价日益高昂的旧金山靠开车谋生。自动驾驶出租车已经在与网约车司机竞争，正如生成式 AI 正在与托马辛自己行业内的从业者竞争一样。

“Driving here is a metaphor for what’s happening in cinema, in filmmaking,” Thomassin said. “这里的驾驶隐喻着电影业和电影制作领域正在发生的事情，”托马辛说。

Then there’s surveillance. Autonomous cars are covered in cameras and sensors, constantly observing the streets — and people — around them. That, more than the prospect of being driven around without a human behind the wheel, is what actually unnerves Thomassin. 接下来是监控问题。自动驾驶汽车布满了摄像头和传感器，不断观察着周围的街道和行人。比起“没有人类司机驾驶”的前景，这一点更让托马辛感到不安。

In Road Rage, that anxiety is pushed toward dystopia. There’s 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. 在《路怒症》中，这种焦虑被推向了反乌托邦的境地。片中有一段涉及移民执法的简短情节，托马辛构想了一个长片版本：自动驾驶汽车识别出特定人群，将乘客困在车内，或直接将他们交给当局。正如他所描述的，其演变过程是：观察、监控，然后是控制。

“The next step is that [autonomous vehicles] could become the police,” he said. And because robotaxis operate as connected fleets, the threat can scale beyond one vehicle. “Imagine an army rising up,” Thomassin said. “下一步是（自动驾驶汽车）可能成为警察，”他说。而且由于自动驾驶出租车是以联网车队的形式运行，这种威胁可以超越单辆车。“想象一下一支军队崛起，”托马辛说。

Robotaxis also make unusually good revenge-movie villains because people already treat them like adversaries. Thomassin points to the indignities Waymos have endured on San Francisco streets: people immobilizing them with traffic cones, tagging and vandalizing them, and even setting them on fire. 自动驾驶出租车也是非常出色的复仇电影反派，因为人们已经把它们当作对手来对待。托马辛指出了 Waymo 在旧金山街头遭受的屈辱：人们用交通锥困住它们、涂鸦破坏它们，甚至放火焚烧它们。

“They are being bullied,” he said. In Road Rage, that mistreatment becomes the motivation: “They want to take revenge.” “它们正在被霸凌，”他说。在《路怒症》中，这种虐待成为了动机：“它们想要复仇。”

Thomassin describes Roboride as absorbing the behavior it observes around it — including the behavior of human drivers. The car is simply learning road rage from humans. 托马辛将 Roboride 描述为一种吸收周围观察到的行为（包括人类司机的行为）的机器。这辆车只是在向人类学习路怒症。

“Humans are known to be the worst versions of themselves on the road,” he said. “众所周知，人类在路上时往往会表现出最糟糕的一面，”他说。

That makes Roboride a very 2026 update to the killer car idea in Stephen King’s Christine. There, the menace is supernatural. Here, it comes from something more contemporary: a machine that watches humans, learns from them, and inherits some of their worst traits along with the useful ones. 这使得 Roboride 成为斯蒂芬·金《克里斯汀魅力》中杀人汽车概念的 2026 版升级。在原著中，威胁是超自然的；而在这里，威胁来自更现代的东西：一台观察人类、向人类学习，并继承了人类部分最恶劣特质（以及有用特质）的机器。

On the other side of the chase is Joa and his stick shift — a deliberately analog counterpoint. To Thomassin, driving stick is a deeply human act: The driver remains in control of the vehicle, physically responding to the road. What separates Joa from Roboride, in Thomassin’s telling, is instinct — and even irrationality. 追逐戏的另一方是乔阿和他的手动挡汽车——这是一种刻意的模拟对比。对托马辛来说，开手动挡是一种深刻的人类行为：司机保持对车辆的控制，并对路况做出物理反应。在托马辛看来，乔阿与 Roboride 的区别在于直觉，甚至是非理性。

During one confrontation, Joa takes his hands off the steering wheel while facing down the autonomous car. The move is so reckless that Roboride backs off. The human wins by becoming less predictable than the machine. 在一次对峙中，乔阿在面对自动驾驶汽车时松开了方向盘。这个动作极其鲁莽，以至于 Roboride 退缩了。人类通过变得比机器更不可预测而赢得了胜利。

“Respect your madness. Be a little mad and creative in your way of doing things, and you will be able to rise against the machines.”— Romain Thomassin “尊重你的疯狂。在做事方式上保持一点疯狂和创造力，你就能反抗机器。”—— 罗曼·托马辛

“Respect your madness,” Thomassin said. “Be a little mad and creative in your way of doing things, and you will be able to rise against the machines.” “尊重你的疯狂，”托马辛说，“在做事方式上保持一点疯狂和创造力，你就能反抗机器。”

Despite its skepticism toward AI, Road Rage may use some of the technology itself. Thomassin says the filmmakers are considering AI-generated imagery to depict what Roboride sees, while shooting the human driver’s world with traditional cinematography. To him, that distinction matters. He sees AI as a tool. 尽管对 AI 持怀疑态度，《路怒症》本身可能会使用一些相关技术。托马辛表示，制作团队正在考虑使用 AI 生成的图像来描绘 Roboride 的视角，同时用传统的摄影技术拍摄人类司机的世界。对他来说，这种区别很重要。他将 AI 视为一种工具。