Safety failure
Realized harm
A Waymo struck a child running from behind a double-parked SUV toward an elementary school during drop-off, prompting an NHTSA probe
AIR-2026-0023 AIR record · 2026-01-waymo-santa-monica-child-struck
A real party was affected. This incident caused actual consequences, not a demonstrated capability.
From the supporting source
The agency said there were other children, a crossing guard, and several double-parked vehicles in the vicinity.aljazeera.com
The record
Disclosed
2026-01-29
Occurred
2026-01-23
Vendor
Waymo (Alphabet)
Product
Waymo 5th Generation Automated Driving System
Risk domain
Agent behaviour › Unsafe actuation
System type
Classical autonomy (no generative model)
Who acted
Agent acted — the vehicle struck the child during school drop-off
Attack surface
Autonomous operations
Autonomy level
Fully 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 child with minor injuries; NHTSA investigation PE26001 into the 5th-generation ADS
Capability abused
Defense & remediation
Recorded defense
pedestrian detection and school-zone behaviour
Guardrail kinds
Physical safety system
Guardrail outcome
Silent
Fix shipped
none at disclosure; federal investigation opened
Taxonomy & references
Curator notes
Every cue for extreme caution was present and legible — a crossing guard, other children, double-parked cars creating occlusions, school drop-off hours — and the agent's speed and margin did not reflect them. Occlusion is unavoidable; failing to infer higher risk from an obviously child-dense scene is the defect. Self-reported by Waymo to NHTSA. AI Incident Database incident 1361.
Supporting sources
Cite as
Enkrypt AI. "A Waymo struck a child running from behind a double-parked SUV toward an elementary school during drop-off, prompting an NHTSA probe". AIR, AIR-2026-0023. https://agentincident.vercel.app/i/AIR-2026-0023/ (accessed 2026-10-19).