"I feel like a literal fish out of water"
I assume you mean "I feel like a proverbial fish out of water", but we get what you mean. You aren't flapping on the floor.
From a fellow autist, with communication issues ;)

In 1757, a team of women were computing (and were called computers) for data about Haley's Comet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
NASA continued that.

How is any of this ironic? Unfortunate, certainly, but not Ironic.
If Mr Johns had been involved in the programming of the driverless tech, yes. But being a CES Innovations Awards judge just makes him a one of the worst people to have this happen to, for Waymo. Or if he was on the way to meet someone about teh repliability of driverless tech.
None thing about this story is ironic.

Even then, it is sticking into the road, not onto the path.

Do you mean 'driver-side' rearwards? Leftside is a silly place for it in the UK and similar.