That's a valid point to make in the general case, for times when you have no good option, and hitting the pedestrian in the crosswalk may be the lesser evil.
But in this case, hard breaking would have been plenty fine and with little downside risk (beyond the general problem of excessive unnecessary braking). The car's computer was aware of an obstacle in sufficient time, as would a human driver have been.
> hitting the pedestrian in the crosswalk may be the lesser evil.
I would not go so far as to say that, only because if that had been the situation then the car and it's onboard system would have to take the all the blame.
But in this case, based on the footage I saw the car was travelling down a freeway at high speed and at night.
Now some of the blame might be attributably to the car, but the real cause of the accident was the pedestrian walking down a freeway, so it seems clear most of the blame hast to be attributed to the pedestrian.
But in this case, hard breaking would have been plenty fine and with little downside risk (beyond the general problem of excessive unnecessary braking). The car's computer was aware of an obstacle in sufficient time, as would a human driver have been.