The backup Uber driver for a self-driving vehicle that killed a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix in 2018 pleaded guilty Friday to endangerment in the first deadly crash involving a fully autonomous car.Arizona state judge David Garbarino, who accepted the plea agreement, sentenced Rafaela Vasquez to three years of supervised probation for the crash that killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg. Vasquez, 49, told police that Herzberg “came out of nowhere” and that she didn’t see Herzberg before hitting her on a darkened Tempe street on 18 March 2018.Vasquez had been charged with felony negligent homicide. The charge to which she pleaded could be reclassified as a misdemeanor if she completes probation.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 Herzberg, who was crossing with her bicycle.Vasquez’s attorneys said she was was looking at a messaging program used by Uber employees on a work cellphone that was on her right knee. They said the TV show was playing on her personal cellphone, which was on the passenger seat.Defense attorney Albert J …
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