Family sues Google after Maps allegedly directed father off collapsed bridge
Family sues Google after Maps allegedly directed father off collapsed bridge
Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago
Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago
Discuss!
neither the destroyed bridge nor the road leading to it had any barriers or warning signs to alert drivers of the hazard.
Well it seems clear who is actually to blame here.
128Seems like most of the blame goes there but
a bridge that had collapsed nearly a decade earlier.
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. Google never responded to the suggestion, allege attorneys.
It's collapsed a decade ago and they've even tried to get Google to mark it so on their maps, unsuccessfully. Google must have some responsibility to the maps and routing.
43Please refer to the Google Maps Terms of Service: https://www.google.com/help/terms_maps/
By using the service, every user agrees to these terms.Section 3:
Actual Conditions; Assumption of Risk. When you use Google Maps/Google Earth's map data, traffic, directions, and other content, you may find that actual conditions differ from the map results and content, so exercise your independent judgment and use Google Maps/Google Earth at your own risk. You’re responsible at all times for your conduct and its consequences.17
Google and the Town?
-4I'd say municipality/landowners, Google and the driver themself.
Municipality, land owners for not marking it, fixing it, making sure nobody mistakenly drives there. Google for routing him over it. Also the driver too for their part. Though not knowing the specifics it's hard to say how much responsibility everyone has exactly but I'd say most of it lies on the municipality/landowners. Depending on who is supposed to mark those things over there.
8
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.
52Did 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.
33Yes 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)
8
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.
5
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.
28As unhappy as I am with google these days, this one isn't on them - atleast not to any point of legal liability.
17Lawyers 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.
16That'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.
15
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.
10Safety regulations are written in blood, warning labels are written by morons (usually)
9We had this years ago...
We do so much for stupid people that some times it feels like if we do any more, we'll lose our freedom and quality of life. There's always going to be outliers and we should just be impressed they made it as far as they did. We can't cater to them for everything.
8How are you going to lose freedom or quality of life if Google is forced to maintain its services and provide you with better information?
7counterpoint. google blindly accepts any change suggested by users leading to MUCH worse outcomes, or thoroughly investigates each request, GLOBALLY I might add, consuming more resources than exist in all the company.
or we just accept that maps are sometimes wrong and use our fucking eyes while driving
3
Bit overdramatic much?
-1
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!
8In 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”.
The road of bones is not in Serbia, it's in Russia.
3
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.
6Also 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.
8
The machine knows!
4Stop yelling at me! Stop yelling!
1
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?
0I'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.
13The 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
7Well put. In so many of these threads I see childish "Boo! Fuck big corp Boo!!!" without actual discussion.
If this was Apple Maps do folks behave the same? Bing Maps? OpenStreet Maps? A printed Rand McNally map?
Or what if the car were a Tesla? Suddenly it's "Boo cars", or maybe we hate Ford? Boo Ford!!!
None of that is really relevant.
Now as was pointed out, there was improper signage, so maybe the state/county/city/local roadworks are partially at fault here. That is going to require some investigation.
By all accounts there was some bad weather and someone misjudged what needed to be done to keep themselves safe. That sucks, I feel for the family, but the navigation app they used isn't relevant.
No one "Backing the big corp" because they are a big corp. I'm "backing the big corp" because we all know this is frivolous. If this was instead the "cool new app written by a middle schooler" I'd still be backing them because the app is completely unrelated to the accident.
3
