It would be extremely silly to lie about an implementation detail that doesn't matter in an official recall filing with an agency currently investigating you for your reporting of incidents like this.

It could also just be everything gets a damage score, including reflection artifacts that aren't really there or paper garbage in the road, and in this case the pole was identified incorrectly, given a low score, and the car thought it could keep driving.

The verge seems to quote the filing, it would be nice if they had linked it. I can't find it from searching.