Sure, but automation wasn't so much the problem here - this was mostly a human factors/human-machine interaction problem. Quite a few people died due to similar

Sure, but automation wasn't so much the problem here - this was mostly a human factors/human-machine interaction problem. Quite a few people died due to similar problems over the history of aviation - here, they just needed to have the levers a bit more visible, and/or having it click into the closed position (a little notch and a spring on the lever) and it would make it very difficult to make the same error. Other times it was putting important levers too close to each other, having one warning bell that sounds too much like a different one, etc. Like much of aviation, a lot of these lessons were learnt through a lot of accidents and fatalities.