Was it though? Look closely, and maybe replay it a few times (I just did, another response to a different comment of mine had made this point so I looked). The car seems to have recovered itself, and the driver grabbed it a second later after it was already correcting.
That it decided it needed to turn all of a sudden us perplexing, and something that should be looked into, but it also went back to a straight path a moment later, either because of pedestrians too close or because of some other reason.
> nobody is arguing this error was so bad it could have killed civilians even if the driver was responsible.
"drove directly through where the people were going to be" most definitely implies that to my eyes. People die for exactly that reason all the time. Maybe I'm confused as to what you're trying to communicate.