A few points:
1. I don't think comparisons to road accidents have any relevance here, the people, procedures, equipment and environment are all totally different.
2. A lot of posts mention holes in the Swiss cheese, but there seem to be relatively few holes needed to line up to cause this accident: the AF crew didn't realise the proximity of the CRJ; the controller wasn't aware of the CRJ's position - anything else?
I guess the granularity of these can be broken down but I think that in the most part it would point to a lack of equipment on the A380 and on the ground. Oh, and the lack of a healthy paranoia of unseen 'threats' when taxiing at a busy airport at night.
3. Should the A-SMGCS / ASDE-X have helped to avoid this? I understand the resolution may not be high enough to show a possible conflict, but it should show that the CRJ was not parked on the stand?
ITI