[userbinator]

You can't do "auto crossover" with USB because it needs to distinguish between D+/D- for speed selection.

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/73295/in-a-u...

It works for Ethernet because the transmit and receive lanes are separate, but with USB, there's only one pair used for both directions.

[ilyt]

It doesn't need to.

It chose to. They could just use different way to do it. Like, I dunno, a single packet of negotiation in slow mode...