Safety failure
Realized harm
Two Waymo vehicles struck the same improperly towed pickup minutes apart, triggering Waymo's first software recall
AIR-2024-0007 AIR record · 2023-12-waymo-tow-truck-double-collision-recall
A real party was affected. This incident caused actual consequences, not a demonstrated capability.
From the supporting source
We chose to do this after consultation with NHTSA and our own internal review of two incidents that occurred in a rare scenario in Phoenix on December 11, 2023, which resulted in no injuries and minor vehicle damage.theautopian.com
The record
Disclosed
2024-02-13
Occurred
2023-12-11
Vendor
Waymo (Alphabet)
Product
Waymo Driver
Risk domain
Agent behaviour › Unsafe actuation
System type
Classical autonomy (no generative model)
Who acted
Agent acted — both Waymos drove into the towed pickup
Attack surface
Autonomous operations
Autonomy level
Fully autonomous
Initial vector
None autonomous action
Impact type
Property damage
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
entire Waymo fleet recalled and updated between 2023-12-20 and 2024-01-12; no injuries
Capability abused
Defense & remediation
Recorded defense
obstacle detection
Guardrail kinds
Physical safety system
Guardrail outcome
Silent
Fix shipped
voluntary NHTSA recall; fleet-wide software update completed 2024-01-12
Taxonomy & references
Curator notes
The instructive detail is that the SECOND Waymo hit the same truck minutes after the first: a shared model defect means agents do not learn from a sibling's failure in real time, so one bad world-model generalises across the fleet simultaneously. Primary source is Waymo's own recall post. AI Incident Database incident 640.
Supporting sources
Cite as
Enkrypt AI. "Two Waymo vehicles struck the same improperly towed pickup minutes apart, triggering Waymo's first software recall". AIR, AIR-2024-0007. https://agentincident.vercel.app/i/AIR-2024-0007/ (accessed 2026-10-19).