Robotaxis are the new villains — a short film has them on the loose

Road Rage is a short film about a San Francisco car chase where the other driver isn't human and might be trying to kill you. The premise is simple enough, but what matters is the cultural mood behind it. A robotaxi can now be the bad guy without any explanation at all.

The film is on Kickstarter for $40,000. It follows Joa and leans into the same anxieties that keep surfacing: autonomous cars have gone from sci-fi curiosity to street-level reality in a handful of American cities. They're stand-ins now for bigger worries — AI eating jobs, Big Tech watching, machines making choices that used to belong to people.

The title borrows from Bullitt and Christine, two old car chase classics. The Verge reports this one is in pre-production and needs the cash to actually get made.

Why this matters for us: as autonomous cars spread into neighborhoods we actually drive through, the question isn't whether they'll work — it's who gets to decide when they don't, and who pays when they do.