> to disable any built-in automated driving features in the car
Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB), which is the system that could have prevented this accident, is not an automated driving function though; it is an active safety function. As such, it is more common to stack such functions. For instance, ABS > AEB > automated driving, with the left most being the function with the highest priority, i.e., it can override the functions to the right. This is how most safety systems in cars work in production.
The pedestrian airbag was introduced before the Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) safety function was available. Volvo no longer offers the pedestrian airbag as they found most pedestrian accidents were avoided by the AEB.
The V40 is also a rather old car and is based on an old platform. The XC90 on the other hand was their newest car at the time the Uber deal was made and is based on their latest platform. So it is not unusual that both Uber and Volvo would prefer the XC90 over the V40. Besides, given the newer technology in the XC90 it is quite possible it is better in pedestrian accidents than the V40 (with the safety systems enabled on both).
I'm clocking more than 2GB memory usage for this site after 30 secs on firefox.
EDIT: Seems to be firefox specific. Lots of CPU use on Chrome but memory consumption seems to be under control.