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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