Self driving Uber crash: Convicted robber was behind the wheel when car struck pedestrian

Rafaela Vasquez, 44, is one of Uber’s ‘safety drivers’ and was in the self-driving Volvo SUV on Sunday.

Police said that the 49-year-old victim, who was mowed down, was pushing her bike with shopping bags on the handles when she stepped out from the shadows in front of the car as she tried to cross the road.

The driver has convictions for attempted armed robbery after a plot with her Blockbuster video store co-worker to seize their own shop’s takings at gunpoint in 2001.

Vasquez was convicted under her first name Rafael but she now identifies as a woman.

She served more than four years of her five-year sentence for the crime and was freed in November 2004.

She told police that her victim stepped out in front of her with a bicycle carrying shopping bags and she did not have the time to brake.

The horrific accident prompted Uber to stop all of its self-driving cars in Arizona, Pittsburgh and Toronto.

The crash is the first fatal car accident involving self-driving cars since they were launched in 2016.

Police chief Sylvia Moir said: “It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway.

“The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them. His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.”

The Volvo SUV had at least two video cameras, one facing the forward and the other on the ‘safety driver’.

Uber has been lobbying politicians in America to speed up the introduction of driverless cars.

But Raj Rajkumar, head of Carnegie Mellon University’s self-driving car laboratory, said: “People can get killed. Companies need to take a deep breath. The technology is not there yet.”

Democratic Senator Edward Markey, a member of the transportation committee, said: “This tragic accident underscores why we need to be exceptionally cautious when testing and deploying autonomous vehicle technologies on public roads.”

Uber said in a statement after the crash: “Our hearts go out to the victim’s family.

“We are fully cooperating with local authorities in their investigation.”