The bits of information I’ve read since does seem to point in that direction. Supposedly, the first thing the human driver noticed was the impact. But it was also supposedly doing 38 in a 35 and didn’t brake, meaning it did not detect any anomaly.

The question that I actually find interesting surrounding accidents like these is who will pick up the responsibility, because that will determine how our streets are gonna look in a few decades. Did you know jaywalking was a word invented by automotive companies?

Automotive interests banded together under the name Motordom. One of Motordom’s public relations gurus was a man named E. B. Lefferts, who put forth a radical idea: don’t blame cars, blame human recklessness. Lefferts and Motordom sought to exonerate the machine by placing the blame with individuals.

This subtle shift allowed for streets to be re-imagined as a place where cars belonged, and where people didn’t. Part of this re-imagining had to do with changing the way people thought of their relationship to the street. Motordom didn’t want people just strolling in.

If we allow the blame to be shifted to people/the driving environment too much (instead of the car manufacturers), history will simply repeat itself.