Tesla said it didn't have key data in a fatal crash, then a hacker found it

Everyone is mad at Tesla but they're literally the only company collecting this kind of crash metadata.

Other car manufacturers would never get in trouble for this because it's not even possible for them to do it in the first place!

Wrong. Almost all modern cars track location and tons of other data. Ford even has a screen that pops-up saying basically "hey you're opting into this FYI".

Everyone is mad because they killed people and lied about it.

People aren't mad that they collect the data, everyone does that, but that they immediately deleted it, then lied about it ever happening, in a matter of life and death.

I would deeply encourage you to re-assess whatever led you to make this comment, because you have fallen wildly off the mark here. Corporations are not your friend.

You think other cars are recording whether they detected a person and the approximate location of the person to the car?

I certainly think that. Because, as a software engineer in robotics and drones, that's exactly what I would do. Using logs to recreate the scenario, especially for regression testing, is standard process for competent software engineers.