Almost every accident is caused by or contributed to by pilot error. This accident is no different. Apart from the failure to pull the throttles back, which alone would have caused the airplane to be lost due to the excess speed, the pilot could have followed the checklist for the trim failure. He did not, or did not do it as per the checklist. The loss of the aircraft was not due to the failure of the MCAS, it was due to the failure of the crew to follow the correct emergency checklist procedures. It matters not what caused the trim to run away; in this case it was the MCAS but next time it could be a stuck trim switch, or a broken wire: are we supposed to accept that it is OK for a professional pilot to simply fly the aircraft into the ground because he was unaware of the cause of the runaway trim?
I cannot follow the logic that because Boeing did not give enough information on the MCAS to the crews (who obviously would not have understood it anyway) it is OK for a pilot to kill everyone on board his aircraft. There is no excuse for not knowing how to fly your aircraft, especially when the procedure that would have allowed the crew to safely land was in the QRH and undoubtedly had been trained, was ignored or not followed.
And more so in this case, when the Lion Air guys had already demonstrated the wrong way to handle this emergency.
Don't gang up on Boeing, sure they could have handled the introduction of the MCAS on the 737 better, but it is patently obvious that if they had done a better job, this crew would not have understood or changed anything in the way they flew and would have flown into the ground anyway. Or are we all lawyers now, going after the deep pockets? If so, how are we as pilots or the airlines or customers supposed to benefit? If we don't face up to the fact that pilots are not being trained properly and fix that, this type of accident will continue to happen.