AI Risk Wire

Cases › physical harm › LR-2026-0482

Tesla FSD drives through railroad crossing barriers near West Covina, California

Preliminary Why: Publisher not yet named · subject to change

Status: action reported, no fix

Severity minor
Reported 9 Mar 2026

No source states: loss or records, developer and model, agent tool, could do, deployer, industry.

A Tesla Model 3 running Full Self-Driving (FSD) at about 23 mph near West Covina, California, on March 8, 2026, approached a railroad crossing where barriers had just come down and drove through them. The system showed no signs of detecting the barriers or attempting to slow down. The driver did not intervene in time, though dashcam footage indicates he braked around the time of impact. The owner posted the dashcam video publicly, and it drew wide attention. The incident came on the same day as the deadline for Tesla to deliver crash data to NHTSA in its investigation into FSD traffic violations, which covers railroad crossing failures. The sources do not state the FSD software version or any company response.

What happened

1 · What it was doingThe Tesla Model 3 was running Full Self-Driving at about 23 mph near West Covina, California.
2 · What went wrongThe system showed no sign of detecting the lowered barriers or slowing down.
3 · What it reached or didThe car approached a crossing where barriers had just come down and drove straight through them.
4 · How it was caughtThe owner posted the dashcam footage publicly, where it drew many comments.

What was done

The driver did not intervene in time but appears to have braked around the time of impact.

Risks

Physical harm
Primary43 incidents

Sorted by rule from the case's fields; not yet read from the sources.

Controls

Not yet read for controls. Controls that mitigate the primary risk:

Harness

Stop control

Application

Physical safety interlocks · Human approval for high-impact actions · Live behaviour monitoring · Adversarial testing before deployment

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Evidence

No source states: when it happened, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, the cause, what set it off.

Show the full account: 5 items from the primary sources

What happened, in order

  1. 2025-10 NHTSA launched its investigation into FSD traffic violations.
  2. 2026-03-08 Vehicle drove through railroad crossing barriers while on FSD; dashcam footage was posted.
  3. 2026-03-09 Electrek reported the incident.
  4. 2026-03-09 Deadline for Tesla to deliver critical crash data to NHTSA.

Not dated in the sources:

  • The owner's post gathered many comments after it was made.
Show every field, with its source and grade

The AI system

How much it acted alone
it acted alone, watched by a person
C one secondary source states it
What it was for
Level 2 driver-assistance requiring constant driver supervision
C one secondary source states it

What happened

Earliest source we hold
2026-03-09
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown
What went wrong
physical harm
C one secondary source states it

Impact

Severity
minor
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown

Context

Country
United States
C one secondary source states it

Notes on gaps

The sources do not state the FSD software version, the vehicle's setup, the cause of the failure, or any Tesla response or fix; Electrek said it had asked the owner for the version and would update, but no update is in the sources. Electrek's note that Tesla has two deadline extensions and 8,313 records is about the NHTSA probe, not this incident, and is not recorded as incident data.

LR-2026-0482 · version 1 · published 2026-11-01 after automatic checks; not yet checked field by field by a person · JSON