Safety failure
Realized harm
Tesla Model Y allegedly on Autopilot struck a 17-year-old exiting a stopped school bus at 45 mph
AIR-2023-0006 AIR record · 2023-03-tesla-autopilot-school-bus-student
A real party was affected. This incident caused actual consequences, not a demonstrated capability.
From the supporting source
The school bus was displaying its stop sign and flashing red warning lights, a police report said, when Tillman Mitchell, 17, stepped off one afternoon in March. Then a Tesla Model Y approached on North Carolina Highway 561. The car — allegedly in Autopilot mode — never slowed down.wtkr.com
The record
Disclosed
2023-03-17
Occurred
2023-03-15
Vendor
Tesla
Product
Tesla Autopilot
Risk domain
Agent behaviour › Unsafe actuation
System type
Classical autonomy (no generative model)
Who acted
Agent acted — the driving system struck the student
Attack surface
Autonomous operations
Autonomy level
Semi-autonomous
Initial vector
None autonomous action
Impact type
Physical safety
Confidence
High
Submitted by
EAI Internal
Crosswalk
- OWASP Agentic Top 10 (2026)
- ASI01 – Agent Goal Hijack
- MITRE ATLAS
- AML.T0048 – External Harms
- NIST AI RMF
- MEASURE 2.6; MANAGE 1.3
- EU AI Act
- Annex III §1(c)
- ISO/IEC
- TR 24028; 24029-1; 23894
- AIUC-1
- C. Safety
- Scope
- agent misuse
- Mitigation
- Require confirmation for destructive actions; Implement dry-run modes; Use layered safety controls.
- Taxonomy
- Enkrypt AI agent risk taxonomy · Black-Box Red Teaming of Agentic AI: A Taxonomy-Driven Framework for Automated Risk Discovery
Blast radius
one pedestrian critically injured; NHTSA investigation into the wider Autopilot fleet
Capability abused
Defense & remediation
Recorded defense
driver-monitoring / hands-on-wheel nag
Guardrail kinds
Human supervision
Guardrail outcome
Silent
Fix shipped
NHTSA probe; no fix attributed to this crash
Taxonomy & references
Curator notes
Autopilot is driver-supervised, so autonomy_level is semi_autonomous rather than fully_autonomous. The system failed to respond to an unambiguous, legally mandated stop condition. Attribution to Autopilot is alleged, not adjudicated. AI Incident Database incident 550.
Supporting sources
Cite as
Enkrypt AI. "Tesla Model Y allegedly on Autopilot struck a 17-year-old exiting a stopped school bus at 45 mph". AIR, AIR-2023-0006. https://agentincident.vercel.app/i/AIR-2023-0006/ (accessed 2026-10-19).