Back-up driver in first fully autonomous car death pleads guilty to endangerment

Authorities say Vasquez was streaming the television show The Voice on a phone and looking down in the moments before Uber’s Volvo XC-90 SUV struck Ms Herzberg, who was crossing with her bicycle

Rafaela Vasquez was sentenced to three years’ probation (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

The back-up Uber driver for a self-driving vehicle that killed a pedestrian in Phoenix in 2018 has pleaded guilty to endangerment in the first fatal collision involving a fully autonomous car.

Rafaela Vasquez told police that 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg “came out of nowhere” and that she did not see the pedestrian before the March 18 collision on a darkened Tempe street.