Ok, so I get a bug up my butt and call and old instructor guy I know in Montreal that taught me in the CRJ and asked him about this crash. Here's the thing. The gear collapsed rearward. The gear is designed to collapse forward if it is going to collapse. By design, if the gear collapsed like it was designed, there is enough distance between the radius of the spinning prop and the ground when the aircraft falls on it's wing. The Dornier 328 was also like this. Even if it collapsed, the wing would hit first thus clearing the prop. This of course is strickly based on landing on a runway. Any other surface, clearance can not be anticipated.
Now since the gear collapsed the wrong way, all bet's were off. If the gear would have collpased the correct way, he feels that they would have stayed on the runway sliding on the wing and the prop never would have hit the ground. Once the prop hit, this is what sent them into the grass.
They don't know why, but they sent investigators to SAS to inspect the plane and find out what caused it to fail the wrong way. He did say, the crew followed everything to a "T" and there was no way to know that the airplane would not have failed as designed.
This is not the first of gear problems with the 400. Other failures hav occured, but non which resulted in prop strikes since they failed like designed. Also, since the props are composite, they are designed to shatter at impact. The prop shield on the fuselage is made of a 6-layer carbon fiber material that will stop the blade from entering the cabin. It will not stop it from piercing the cabin itself however.
Just FYI