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Thursday, May 30, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

After ten days of festivities, 
the eighth annual Cinetopia Film 
Festival concluded May 19 at the 
Michigan Theater with a screen-
ing of “Autonomy,” a documen-
tary about self-driving cars. The 
film, which was directed by Alex 
Horwitz (“Hamilton’s Ameri-
ca”) and had originally aired at 
SXSW, explores the future of 
autonomous vehicles by trac-
ing the history of cars and driv-
ing. While the film shies away 
from rigorous analysis of some 
of the more fundamental issues 
surrounding self-driving cars, 
“Autonomy” is an entertaining 
(if blatantly biased) introduction 
to autonomous vehicles.
“Autonomy” opens with Mal-
colm Gladwell describing his 
vintage BMW in adoring detail. 
It’s “the most beautiful thing I 
own,” he says, and the car cer-
tainly is lovely — baby blue, ele-
gant but not impractical. Even 
for those whose cars are not 
pieces of impeccable German 
engineering, many people have 
some sort of emotional entangle-
ment with their vehicle. “Auton-
omy” carefully outlines this 
relationship, inviting historians 
and experts to tell the story of 
how cars drifted from commodi-
ties of convenience to symbols 

of freedom, adventure and self-
sufficiency. The movie deems 
cars embodiments of the desire 
to be masters of our own destiny, 
a proposal that’s spot-on. Beyond 
its practical uses, the car has 
become a co-conspirator, a dare 
to strike out on the road.
“You got a fast car / I want a 
ticket to anywhere / Maybe we 
make a deal / Maybe together we 
can get somewhere,” sings Tracy 

Chapman on “Fast Car,” and the 
whole song is full of longing, the 
car promising both escape and 
security. On “Highway Patrol-
man,” Bruce Springsteen breaks 
your heart describing a police 
officer who lets his brother 
escape to Canada. How? There’s 
a car chase, and a memory of 
brotherly love: “Well I chased 
him through them county roads / 
Till a sign said ‘Canadian border 
five miles from here’ / I pulled 
over the side of the highway and 
watched his tail lights disap-
pear.” In other words, it’s never 
just a car.

What would it mean to change 
all this? That’s the question 
“Autonomy” strives to answer, 
surveying the legal, safety and 
social 
concerns 
that 
might 
arise if we hand the keys to our 
machines over to the machines. 
The film is at its best when it 
allows philosophers and indus-
try professionals to weigh in on 
the morality of transferring the 
responsibilities of a driver to a 
machine. There’s a lot of inter-
esting territory to cover, and 
“Autonomy” is engrossing. But 
I’m more interested in all the 
things “Autonomy” leaves out.
“Autonomy,” which was pro-
duced by Car and Driver Maga-
zine, feels in some ways like an 
extended piece of propaganda 
from a director who isn’t fully 
ready to trot out the party line. 
The party line isn’t that self-
driving cars will be a safe and 
inevitable aspect of our collec-
tive future — it’s that cars will 
be, in one form or another. They 
might look and operate differ-
ently, but autonomous vehicles 
are still designed as commodities 
to be bought and owned by indi-
viduals. “Autonomy” is focused 
on delineating the glamour and 
danger of cars, and it makes a 
captivating case for the role cars 
have, will and should play in our 
daily lives. However, it never 
stops to ask why we’re commit-
ting our innovative energy to 

rethinking 
personal 
vehicles. 
Malcolm Gladwell, who is vocal 
about his reservations, mentions 
the application of self-driving 
features to public transporta-
tion, but this remains a largely 
untouched topic.
“Autonomy” explains that for 
self-driving cars to operate at 
optimum safety and efficiency, 
autonomous vehicles would need 
to be nearly ubiquitous. Imagine 
this: There would be no need for 
stop signs, since your car would 
be able to sense 
a 
pedestrian 
or 
another 
vehicle 
and adjust accord-
ingly. Cars could 
drive inches apart, 
and 
the 
frantic 
dance of merging 
onto 
a 
freeway 
or into a differ-
ent lane would be 
soothed into a sci-
ence. You could 
watch a movie on 
your commute, or 
send your kids to 
school in the fam-
ily 
car 
without 
having 
to 
drop 
them off.
“Autonomy” 
illustrates 
just 
how appealing this 
would be, but what 
the movie makes less explicit is 
that this future would require 
a cultural and material revolu-
tion — one that would be radical 
in scale but conservative in ide-
ology. In 2017, there were 276.1 
million cars in the United States 
alone, and all of them would need 
to be phased out or converted to 
realize this transformation. Of 
course, the automotive industry 
is investing in self-driving tech-
nology — this could be their big-
gest opportunity for sales since 
cars were invented! Maybe I’m 
being cynical, but regardless, I 
struggle to imagine the efficacy 
of such a fundamental remaking 
of transportation when the goal 
is limited to accident- and stress-
free driving. These are worthy 
aims, but it would be a grave 
mistake to pursue them without 
simultaneously considering the 
impact of cars on the environ-
ment.
“Autonomy” shows self-driv-
ing cars could mean a large reduc-
tion in crashes and pedestrian 
casualties. This is a wonderful 
possibility, but it’s an objective 
that shouldn’t be pursued uncrit-
ically. Car crashes are much 
more immediate and visible than 

fatalities from climate change, 
but both are equally deserving 
of consideration by automobile 
engineers. Autonomous vehicles 
might initially reduce green-
house gas emissions, especially if 
the cars are electric. But unless 
they operate on a schema outside 
traditional, individual car own-
ership, the effects are unlikely 
to be drastic enough (or fast 
enough) to offset climate change.
In Southeast Michigan, it’s 
nearly heretical to suggest that 
cars 
shouldn’t 
be a linchpin of 
American life. I 
understand 
this: 
My 
grandfather 
worked in a Ford 
factory, 
and 
my 
mom still has two 
Ford-emblazoned 
forks that he took 
home from the caf-
eteria at work. The 
Ford 
Company’s 
pension plan kept 
my 
grandmother 
comfortable until 
she died. I own a 
car, and I like hav-
ing one. “Autono-
my” is right: The 
automobile indus-
try is monumen-
tally important to 
individuals and to 
the American imagination and 
economy, especially in Michi-
gan. However, climate change 
will also impact the economy, in 
ways that automated cars do not 
fully account for.
Though 
the 
film 
offers 
exhaustive coverage of other 
aspects 
of 
self-driving 
cars, 
“Autonomy” doesn’t delve into 
the details of possible environ-
mental benefits or damages. The 
Intelligent Transportation Soci-
ety of America projects a two- 
to four-percent decrease in oil 
consumption from autonomous 
vehicles, and there are a number 
of projects showing autonomous 
technologies can help reduce 
emissions. This is good, but it’s 
not 
good 
enough, 
especially 
given the emissions that would 
be produced during manufactur-
ing. Though “Autonomy” tries 
to sidestep the issue by ignoring 
it altogether, the choice to stay 
silent about climate change sim-
ply confirms the extent to which 
carbon neutrality is not a prima-
ry goal of autonomous vehicles. 
Given the revolutionary nature 
of self-driving cars, we should 
be demanding something more 
emancipatory.

‘Autonomy’ neglects the 
stakes of self-driving cars

MIRIAM FRANCISCO
Daily Arts Writer

FILM REVIEW

In Southeast 
Michigan, it’s 
nearly heretical 
to suggest that 
cars shouldn’t 
be a linchpin of 
American life.

GETTY IMAGES

Autonomy

Michigan Theater

