Dear Ian,
Some how I find it hard to belive that it took four months to gather all that information. If you were to look at the CAA and BALPA sites and ask it would take probably a few hours at most to gather the statistics that you and your partner had.
An autopilot system does not just begin to 'turn the aircraft' it will follow the planned route or it must have an input to the system by someone. With all the available information on the World Wide Web surely you were able to find that out.
There are many factors to all situations and incidents, the 'Swiss cheese effect' that you already mentioned, the TCAS system is another line in defence to avoiding traffic conflicts. It will 'talk' to the other TCAS encoder and they will work out a 'resolution' to the situation.
As far as i am concerned they should be followed unless that puts you in even more danger but that would hopefully never happen, wont say never but...
I do hope that you will lead the way of you and your fellow journalists by reporting true and factual pieces and not misinterpreting or misrepresenting the information provided by persons on this site.
all the best
259