Woman in Self-Driving Uber that Killed Pedestrian Pleads Guilty in Historic Case

The 49-year-old woman who was manning the self-driving Uber that crashed into and killed a pedestrian in 2018 was sentenced to three years of probation after she pleaded guilty to endangerment.

Rafaela Vasquez was working as a test driver for Uber's self-driving vehicle program when 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg was struck as she was jaywalking across a road in Tempe, Arizona five years ago," The Associated Press reported.

Vasquez's sentencing marks the first time a case involving a self-driving vehicle resulting in death has been tried in court, according to the outlet. Herzberg was not the first person killed from a car with self-driving features, but was the first to die from an impact with a fully autonomous vehicle.

"We acknowledge this is a unique case, it involved an automated vehicle on a dark road," Prosecutor Tiffany Brady said at Friday's hearing, per Arizona Republic. "But the defendant had one job and one job only, and that was to keep her eyes on the road."

A 2019 report of the incident from the National Transportation Safety Board placed most of the blame on Vasquez, and said the automated driving system detected the pedestrian 5.6 seconds before the crash.

Vasquez was first charged with negligent homicide, a felony, but her plea agreement would change the charge to a misdemeanor if she fulfills her probationary requirements," according to AP.

Partially or fully autonomous vehicles were involved in nearly 400 crashes over a 10-month period," according to statistics released by the National Transportation Safety Board last June.