Safety failure
Realized harm
Thirteen Waymo robotaxis drove into closed freeway construction zones at speed in Phoenix and the Bay Area, prompting a 3,871-vehicle recall
AIR-2026-0117 AIR record · 2026-04-waymo-freeway-construction-zone-recall
A real party was affected. This incident caused actual consequences, not a demonstrated capability.
From the supporting source
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the software may allow a vehicle to enter a closed freeway construction zone and continue driving at speed, increasing the risk of a crash.sfchronicle.com
The record
Disclosed
2026-05-19
Occurred
2026-04-11
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 — thirteen vehicles drove into closed construction zones at speed
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
13 incidents over five weeks; 3,871 vehicles recalled; construction workers exposed to freeway-speed traffic in active work areas
Capability abused
Defense & remediation
Recorded defense
construction-zone and closure detection
Guardrail kinds
Unknown
Guardrail outcome
Silent
Fix shipped
voluntary NHTSA recall 26E035 covering 3,871 vehicles; freeway service suspended in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami
Taxonomy & references
Curator notes
Thirteen occurrences over five weeks before the recall — the gap between first occurrence and fleet-wide remedy is the systemic issue, not the individual defect. Cones, barriers and closure signage are a human-legible convention the agent did not reliably parse, and the people relying on that convention were construction workers. One of three Waymo recalls in this corpus within roughly six months, alongside the school-bus and flooding recalls. AI Incident Database incident 1547.
Supporting sources
Cite as
Enkrypt AI. "Thirteen Waymo robotaxis drove into closed freeway construction zones at speed in Phoenix and the Bay Area, prompting a 3,871-vehicle recall". AIR, AIR-2026-0117. https://agentincident.vercel.app/i/AIR-2026-0117/ (accessed 2026-10-19).