Wow. I actually didn't see that, even after re-reading it looking specifically for it. I had to ctrl-F to find it. It's in bold under the picture so I probably mistook it for general non-article clutter and ignored it. Reading comprehension problem here too!
It does use that causality avoidance word "after". That's technically honest because the author only knows the sequence of events, not the causality, but it also means we only know that too. In an extreme case, it might not even be the same cars that mistook it for a wall as the ones that came off the road, but it also might not be the autonomy that caused them to come off the road, but the driver's actions in response to the braking.
