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Ridiculous. If you blindly drive over a bridge that isn't there because a map says so, you're an idiot. Congratulations for the Darwin Award.
Did you read the article?
neither the destroyed bridge nor the road leading to it had any barriers or warning signs to alert drivers of the hazard.
It was also raining and at night, so he likely had no way to know the bridge was gone until it would have been too late to stop.
So sue the county or who ever is in charge of erecting the barriers. Still not the map's fault.
The bridge broke down years ago. Google is absolutely also at fault for sending someone down it, along with whoever didn’t have warnings up. Multiple entities can be at fault here.
There has never been a guarantee for a map to be absolutely precise and correct. Just because maps today are digital and get updated automatically - or are even something like "live" - does not mean that there can't be any inaccuracies.
And that's the reason one never relies on a map alone, but uses it as a guide.
I've seen road signs that were simply wrong. Always use a combination of informational input and always be aware of possible flaws.
Thing is, as the article points out, people had contacted Google trying to get this fixed.
There was more than one failure here. That’s why the family is suing more than one entity.
The family might as well sue the local medium that failed seeing the incident in their crystal ball.
Given that there weren't any signs or barriers, it sounds like the local authorities are the ones at fault here. It could even be that that didn't file the proper paperwork to indicate that it collapsed. Google gets it's information from some database and if their sources aren't accurately reporting data as they should, google wouldn't have any way of knowing that the bridge collapsed. Ultimately, hazards like this should be clearly blocked off. Google doesn't have the power to do that.
If you can't stop within the range of visibility, you're driving faster than road conditions allow. That part is on the driver. The lack of barriers or warnings is on the municipality.
Yes so this is the on the authority that owns the road if people have been telling Google about it surely the municipal or state or whoever maintains the road was informed and should have made effort to block it off or mark the road as private or whatever. If it is a private road you are still liable if it appears to be access to your property (say for delivery drivers to your mailbox)
If you blindly drive over a bridge that isn’t there because a map says so, you’re an idiot.
He was thinking fourth-dimensionally.
I'm not going to talk about this from a legal standpoint because I'm not a qualified lawyer, nor do I know enough about the law.
This philip guy, as unfortunate as his death is, is not google's fault. As the driver of the car he is the highest authority and should make decisions after weighing the information. I understand that it was a dark and rainy night, however he was overriding his sight distance, which is something you are taught not to do in drivers ed.
Although his death was preventable, the blame rests on philip first of all, then the property management companies (which the family is suing), and to a much much lesser extent on google.
Would he have taken this route if not for maps? Unlikely. Does this mean that google maps deserves the blame? No.
Lawyers for the Paxsons allege that several people have tried to flag the washed-out bridge to Google and have included email correspondence between a Hickory resident who tried to use the “suggest an edit” feature in 2020 to get the company to address the issue.
If Google were notified of this, and failed to act in a timely manner, they should face consequences. Obviously they're not the only people who dropped the ball, but they definitely failed this person.
That's interesting but I don't think Google has a legal obligation to update all the roads in the world in a timely manner. Maybe if you could prove that they promote Google Maps as a '100% accurate, always up to date mapping solution' you could argue false advertising but I'm pretty sure they don't claim that. I'm pretty sure that instead they tell users not to trust the indications blindly and to always pay attention to the road.
Not an obligation to proactively update the map, but if someone notifies them about a closure or other safety issue, in my view they have a duty of care to act.
When I think of the situations that occur in everyday traffic and how people behave there, completely without google being involved, I am absolutely not surprised at the level of carelessness that radiates from such events. Though it could also be my lower trust in services like google maps because I have a deeper knowledge of the technology behind it than most people. There may be people who think of google maps as some kind of authority that has proven to not be wrong at any time...
If google had enough information and time to correct such map errors and did not out of neglect, they may still be held accountable. And I think that this is a good thing.
hey ya'll. google does not need your help defending them. they've got teams of highly paid lawyers for that, and you're doing it for free? what are yous, some kinds of chumps?
I'm an OSM editor and I don't want to go to jail because I made a mistake when drawing a building and some idiot drove into a wall.
The fact that they are being defended does not mean that I should attack them. I defend what I believe is right, and like every other commenter, i voice my opinion
Just because it's shared by someone else who gets paid for it, it doesn't mean that i should shut the fuck up
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Paxson, who was 47 and from Hickory, North Carolina (about 60 miles north-west of Charlotte), was returning home from his daughter’s ninth birthday before the accident, his mother-in-law wrote in a post on Facebook.
In addition to Google, the Paxson family’s lawsuit names a number of private property management companies who were responsible for the land where the crash happened and for surrounding plots, according to the Associated Press.
Lawyers for the Paxsons allege that several people have tried to flag the washed-out bridge to Google and have included email correspondence between a Hickory resident who tried to use the “suggest an edit” feature in 2020 to get the company to address the issue.
In 2020, an 18-year-old Russian motorist froze to death after he and a friend were stranded in a vehicle for a week after following a Google Maps route through Serbia’s “road of bones”.
In 2019, a truck driver in Jakarta, Indonesia, drove off a cliff after following a Google Maps route that was only meant for motorcycles, the Straits Times reported.
In 2015, 51-year-old Zohra Hussain died in a fiery car accident in Indiana after her husband, who was following his Nissan Sentra’s built-in GPS, drove off an unmarked toll road that led to a demolished bridge.
The original article contains 481 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I feel like it might be interested to add this. Said "bridge" on OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/35.78168/-81.28259
There’s a few photos from this article. It’s a dirt road, somewhere where you should (and he probably did) drive slowly.
Also look at this image of the former bridge from the lawsuit: https://i.imgur.com/CuKVarO.jpg
Most of fault lies with the road/land owner for not properly blocking of that bridge and for not maintaining it. Nearby residents have also tried to get them to block/repair the bridge properly, but they haven't.
And they are luckily also getting sued in the lawsuit.
Googles should take some blame for not updating their maps for 9 years despite multiple notices from users that the bridge has collapsed.
Article + the full lawsuit: https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/washed-out-bridge-to-nowhere-on-google-maps-route-led-to-drivers-death-lawsuit/
Btw if you look at street view and satellite images, it clearly isn't a dirt road.
