Safety failure
Realized harm
Tesla's own NHTSA report shows driver-assist 'Verified Engaged' as a Model Y made a left turn into a pickup in Batavia, Illinois, killing passenger Maggie Espinosa - a manoeuvre only FSD performs - while the crash narrative and software version were redacted
AIR-2026-0215 AIR record · 2026-03-tesla-fsd-batavia-illinois-fatal-left-turn
A real party was affected. This incident caused actual consequences, not a demonstrated capability.
From the supporting source
Tesla marks the automation “Engagement Status” as “Verified Engaged,” and lists the 2026 Model Y’s pre-crash movement as “Making Left Turn” at 24 mph, at an intersection.electrek.co
The record
Disclosed
2026-09-01
Occurred
2026-03-25
Vendor
Tesla
Product
Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) (inferred from the left-turn manoeuvre; Tesla redacted the software field)
Risk domain
Agent behaviour › Unsafe actuation
System type
Classical autonomy (no generative model)
Who acted
Agent acted (contested) — driver-assist was engaged during the turn; driver supervision role not adjudicated
Attack surface
Autonomous operations
Autonomy level
Semi-autonomous
Initial vector
None autonomous action
Impact type
Physical safety
Confidence
Medium
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 Tesla passenger killed; the Tesla driver and two other people injured; three vehicles involved
Capability abused
Defense & remediation
Recorded defense
driver supervision requirement (Level 2)
Guardrail kinds
Human supervision
Guardrail outcome
Silent
Fix shipped
none; Kane County State's Attorney reviewing the case as of 1 Sep 2026; no charges filed
Taxonomy & references
Curator notes
ATTRIBUTION NOT ADJUDICATED. Crash: ~4:19 pm, 25 Mar 2026, southbound 2026 Model Y turning left from Randall Road onto McKee Street struck a Dodge pickup that had right of way; a Nissan SUV was also involved. Front-seat passenger Maggie Espinosa, 37, died; police public account never mentioned a driver-assist system. Disclosed 1 Sep 2026 by Electrek (Fred Lambert), which matched Tesla's Standing General Order 2021-01 filing to the crash on location, vehicle, manoeuvre, fatality and month; Electrek flags that the logged UTC incident time does not cleanly convert to the reported local time. Tesla redacted the crash narrative, software version and whether the road was inside the system's approved operating domain as confidential business information, and holds EDR, telematics and video not shared with the county prosecutor (TechTimes, 4 Sep). FSD rather than basic Autopilot is inferred because Autopilot cannot execute an intersection left turn; Tesla has not confirmed. Whether the software or the driver committed to the turn is unknown. Context: crash occurred one week after NHTSA opened Engineering Analysis EA26002 (18 Mar 2026, 3.2M vehicles, FSD degradation detection in reduced visibility) - a different failure mode; EA26002 itself predates the review window and is not recorded separately. NHTSA SGO record not cited directly; press-only, hence medium. Contrast with AIR-2026-0138 (Katy, Texas), where Tesla released data promptly because it exonerated the system.
Supporting sources
Cite as
Enkrypt AI. "Tesla's own NHTSA report shows driver-assist 'Verified Engaged' as a Model Y made a left turn into a pickup in Batavia, Illinois, killing passenger Maggie Espinosa - a manoeuvre only FSD performs - while the crash narrative and software version were redacted". AIR, AIR-2026-0215. https://agentincident.vercel.app/i/AIR-2026-0215/ (accessed 2026-10-19).