An autopsy of physical handover collisions reveals the compound failure when these mechanisms align in a single event (@fig-14-ntsb-telemetry). In an analytical reconstruction of a high-speed mobile platform approaching an unmapped stationary barrier, the timeline decomposes into four distinct phases. In Phase 1, the learned vision policy fails to segment the barrier under low-contrast illumination, maintaining nominal speed while the safety margin shrinks. In Phase 2, the onboard monitoring loop detects kinematic divergence $1.8\text{ s}$ before projected impact and issues an acoustic takeover alert, but passive supervisory gaze decay delays operator perception by $1.2\text{ s}$. In Phase 3, with only $0.6\text{ s}$ remaining, the operator applies emergency manual steering torque, but the active low-level stability enforcer clamps the rate of change and applies counter-torque to prevent chassis slip. The resulting $6\text{ Hz}$ torque fighting locks the steering assembly, preventing lateral evasion.[^fn-inc-boeing-mcas] In Phase 4, the vehicle strikes the obstacle at $22\text{ m/s}$, shearing the front suspension and fracturing the steering gearbox drive pins. The failure occurred not because the operator was absent or because the safety enforcer was inactive, but because the architecture possessed no unified contract governing how authority transfers between them under deadlines.[^fn-inc-airbus-warsaw]
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