"When you don't have a need for a cryptographic digest, it's important to think of the channel's bit error distribution in selecting a checksum algorithm."

Important real-life-facts.

There was no "give-me-an-appropriate-hash" function.

There was:

md5sum yourfile.txt

Nobody wants to think about "channel's bit error distribution" in a non-security critical context. In fact, its irrelevant, and possibly a usability issue.