I was surprised at that -- it doesn't seem to me that the police would have the technical knowledge of Uber's hardware and algorithms to categorically state that, let alone so quickly.
So whether or not the police understand self-driving systems is not relevant to the fundamental physics problem. The key question is how long was the ped visible.
> Sensor Fusion typically merges LiDAR with stereoscopic camera feeds, the latter requiring ambient light.
So might LIDAR data get de-emphasized when there's too little light for the cameras?
It may well be that the Uber cars only have LIDAR and optical, but that doesn't have anything to do with sensor fusion.
I don't see how from a single forward-looking camera you want to deduce this crash was "physically impossible". That isn't even half of what we expect from human drivers. We expect them to swivel their head.