Google sued for negligence after man drove off collapsed bridge while following map directions
Google sued for negligence after man drove off collapsed bridge while following map directions
The family of a North Carolina man who died after driving his car off a collapsed bridge while following Google Maps directions is suing the technology giant for negligence
Ok, I’m not trying to side with google here, but from what I read it seems like he just went over a ledge that wasn’t marked, but also was enough of a problem it could be seen by multiple people.
How is it that the GPS is responsible for his death? Even in unfamiliar places I’m not glued to the GPS because there’s a certain level of awareness you need to have when driving.
43It seems like it was during the day as well. My guess is he was looking down at his phone and not up at the road.
Get a windscreen mount for your cellphone so you can quickly switch between checking the GPS and the road.
Whenever I use directions, I look over the whole route first so I have a fair idea of what the turns are going to be etc before I even put the car in gear. Then you're kind of expecting what to happen rather than being surprised when a turn comes up.
17I'm suing Google because they didn't mark the traffic or red lights around me so I just started gasing into people. Not my fault smh, should've been marked.
3
Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute should sue for the time they were driven into that lake.
13I'm going to get downvoted to hell here, but if you defend google here, you should be defending Tesla when someone severely misuses auto-pilot.
Play games on AP and don't pay attention causing crash, not Tesla's fault. Drive off a bridge cause the GPS tells you to, not Google's fault.
You're responsible for driving your car at all times.
11At least AP presents itself (somewhat) as an autonomous system though… even the best GPS obviously still requires you to look at the road.
14When you sit in the car, it really doesn't though. When you enable it, it clearly warns you about the dangers involved and to always pay attention. The radar versions even warned you about specific situations it would fail in and potentially cause a fatal accident. All cars that rely on radar have that issue and warn their users.
Anyone who's used it knows it clearly has problems, and honestly, it can be a little nerve racking getting used to using at first as well, because it does have problems and you need to learn them. My partner doesn't like using it because of those problems.
The majority of people causing accidents on it have simply grown accustomed to it. They know when it will usually fail, and then make poor choices and end up in a rare circumstance. People are just people and make all sorts of bad choices. Some people follow the GPS off a bridge or into a lake.
That's not to say I don't think there's room for Tesla to improve on this, like using the in cabin camera to further help detect if someone is paying attention or not, but ultimately it falls on the driver to pay attention.
If you happen to be given a Tesla with AP already enabled on your profile, and you've only gone off what you heard in the media then sure maybe, but those aren't the people causing problems. And really, if you rent a Tesla, I really do hope it's all disabled by default so you have to turn it on and go through the setup. That would be a legit problem in my mind otherwise.
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The biggest fault here would be whoever was in charge of that bridge. If it collapsed 9 years ago why was it not blocked off?
10My exact first thought. And why not a billion BIG Red SIGNS saying shit like: "Collapsed Bridge ahead", "Warning: immediate death ahead", "What the fuck are doing?! Turn around", etc.
2That's the biggest question for me.
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A GPS is a tool that aids a person
Tesla FSD is marketed as Self Driving
User error caused this man to go over a cliff. User error does not excuse tesla accidents when the user is supposed to be hands off. One was an accident caused by a person, the other was an accident caused by a machine attempting to make human decisions. There’s a huge difference.
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Is this another bait case trying to overturn section 230?
5Google maps doesn’t do user supplied maps. 230 isn’t relevant.
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Google was notified of the bridge being out nine years ago
Yeah, they should lose this one.
5Nah I don’t buy it. “GPS says turn right off this cliff” is a problem between the wheel and the driver seat, full stop.
14Right, because it's not the drivers responsibility to take basic saftey precautions like looking out the fucking windshield to see where he's going.
No, it must be the map's fault.
11But even then, Google's directions can get weird sometimes regardless if they know of the closure. It happened to me a few weeks ago where a bridge was marked as closed on both sides in Google Maps: it would correctly detour me when going from East to West, but every time it insisted I should drive over the closed bridge when going from West to East.
Actually still does it, try following NY-31 in Lyons from both directions, Google would love to have you drive into the water if you're coming from the West.
8Do you drive with your eyes closed?
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Fuckin' google sent us down two bullshit roads in Wyoming. Fuck. Fuck google.
3Man uses "free" service and has no common sense, dies as result.
???
-6So we should all assume free services put us at risk of grossly negligent loss of life? It wasn't just Google, the damn thing wasn't even marked. Did you read the article? It doesn't sound like this had much to do with a lack of common sense. There is a closed road by me that I have reported three times to Google maps over the past four years and it remains marked as open on maps - it is frustrating to have a reporting feature available and have these requests ignored / univestegated.
9Whether it was free or not doesn’t really matter. I don’t agree with Google at fault because the bridge should have been blocked physically if it collapsed years ago. The law suit is against a bunch of property companies so it sounds like they added google just because.
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