In a manner of speaking what you say is true, because we've classed all forms of crash as being equally bad (infinitely so). And our vehicles were empty of huma

In a manner of speaking what you say is true, because we've classed all forms of crash as being equally bad (infinitely so). And our vehicles were empty of humans, so we deemed their destruction as insignificant compared to harming anything else. I do still think the approach of treating it as an energy minimisation problem was appropriate for our situation, but the differences in the scenarios certainly alter the approach.