This was an interesting thread. Thanks a million to the mod who took out 6 pages. I could barely make it through at 10 pages in length.
For whatever reason, there was no point at which I doubted the OP's story. I was really grateful to see the conversation turn back to "how could this happen, from a technical point of view."
My first thought was that this was a phone problem. I'm using an iphone 6 and since upgrading to ios 11, it hangs, stalls, takes a bunch of commands into its buffer while seeming unresponsive, and then does all kinds of interesting things when the input buffer dumps out into whatever screen shows up at whatever time the os decides to catch up with reality. I'm fairly certain I'll end up getting a new phone because I'll eventually get so mad at this one that I'll crush it in my hand while grinding my teeth into powder. And while smashing it, I'll probably inadvertently send a selfie to 911 and unintentionally summon my car into sapling that is too narrow to be seen by the sonar sensors. But I digress.
It's not at all uncommon in my experience for a phone to buffer a lot of input commands, or alternatively (with similar outcomes) to take one command, (like a button press) and then not take the next command for a while (like the button release). I notice this kind of thing most often with volume controls on home theater receivers or similar devices that have app-remotes. I always have to be careful to press, wait, press, wait, press, wait; or else I run the risk of winding the volume up to [a lot] and having to deal with This American Life at an inappropriate volume level.
So my theory isn't that there was a connectivity problem. I think there was a great connection, and the reason the car kept going is because the phone kept telling it to, irrespective of what the OP was telling their phone. I can't help but wonder if the OP might have poked at the button a few extra times, trying to get it to respond, and maybe that didn't help. Or is it possible if the OP was freaking out (as I would be) and they had a death grip on the phone, and maybe part of their hand or part of a finger spilled over onto the touchscreen which the phone took to mean "keep pressing!" I'm really reaching with those ideas, and I honestly don't think I need to. I accidentally called a guy and cancelled it three times today because the display was so far behind the input buffer. I'm sure the iphone 7 is better than the iphone 6, but I think ios11 has a serious problem with trying to do something (I don't know what) in the time between a user pressing a button and the expected result occurring.
Not at all surprised that the sonar didn't see the straw man (how hysterical is it that this story has an actual straw man?) laying on the ground. Sonars on my car can barely see curbs. A soft round thing that is very low to the ground... not likely. I've worked with a lot of sonar senors and I'm amazed that they work as well as they do as parking sensors, given that I know how badly they work for everything else. As others have said, for big, flat, hard things - they work great! For everything else, I just assume they don't work until proven otherwise. And to keep it on topic, that means shelf units, ladders, broom handles, etc. in the garage when I use summon to creep the car in. Or the 4x4 post holding the deck up when I pull the car out... there's an excellent chance the sonars will miss those things.
Looking forward to hearing what we learn from @
Matutino's experience.