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Man people are judgy as hell. I like to think that I'd notice and stop too, but at 11pm, tired in the middle of nowhere with no street lights? How many of us know 100% that we would have stopped in time? It's understandable how this happened.
After an entire decade of directing people to drive off a goddamn bridge, Google should apologize to the family and settle. It's shameful. Get a better update team if you're going to provide a mapping service.
It doesn't matter. It should be literally impossible for a map to have any liability under any circumstances.
If the bridge wasn't labeled and blocked properly, all the liability is on the people responsible for it.
I agreed that the bridge owners should be the most responsible. But this bridge has been down for a decade, and with many reports to Google to change the path. The neglect at that side is definitely part of the issue
It's a map. It's strictly informational.
There's literally nothing they could do that would make a single penny of liability valid or acceptable.
I get it's informational. Its mentioned the bridge has been down for a decade and has been reported to Google multiple times. That at the very least should be something. You can argue this mans death isn't because of maps directly but it's hard to ignore the facts that this has been reported to Google multiple times.
No, it shouldn't. It literally does not matter in any way.
It is unconditionally impossible for there to be forgivable reason to attach liability to any good faith attempt to share information in any context. Applying liability to a map is fucking disgusting in every possible scenario.
And Google would fucking love a ruling against them. It's regulatory capture that makes it impossible for any competition to be developed because of the insurmountable barrier to entry such an abhorrent ruling would provide.
Is it still a "good faith attempt to share information" when they've ignored reports that their information is incorrect for literally a decade? If this was medical advice, would you still be saying that the provider of decade old misinformation not be at fault?
Why is it ok for a provider to knowingly give bad instructions, instructions that they have very good reason to know is incorrect, that leads to someone's death? At what point does it become clear neglegencenon the provider of said instructions?
I'm not saying Google is 100% at fault for the death, as the local municipalities owe a lions share of the blame for not properly marking the danger in a way that could have saved this person's life. But washing googles hands of blame when they couldn't be bothered to update their routes after a fucking decade is unconcionable.
Unconditionally yes.
Acting on reports can never under any circumstance be a prerequisite to providing information. If every single report they'd ever received was about this one place being incorrect, they had a human review them, and didn't change it, it would not even be theoretically possible for it to constitute negligence.
Negligence is failing to meet some obligation, and their obligation can never not be actually zero.
For sure... the city/township/municipality responsible for repairs and upkeep should have clearly marked and coned off this route immediately.
Sure, Google should have updated the route and maybe deserves to pay a small fraction of the total payout depending on how egregious the warnings to them are and specific details of the case...
BUT, whatever entity is responsible for the bridge deserves to pay out most to all of the settlement because it should not have been possible to drive off of the bridge without plowing through a clear barrier.
Not some small fraction. Literally zero.
The premise of it being possible for a map to have liability is disgusting.
People have become too entitled with the idea that all information should and must be updated and accurate in the information age.
I grew up learning how to read the Rand McNally maps. Imagine if one of those maps showed a road/bridge was available only to find out it wasn't. It's not the map makers responsibility, nor do they have an obligation for 100% accuracy. They strive for accuracy only because it's good for their business.
I saw in the article that they're suing the road owners. Those are who are responsible, not Google. They took down the barricades because of "vandalism" and didn't immediately replace them.
It's one thing if the map is outdated by a few months, but the bridge has been down for a decade and google has been ignoring reports to change the system
A print map should also have been able to adjust to this in a decades time
Not to say google is responsible I'll just trying to see the family's pov, you know the people who just lost a loved one partially due to this. Google told them to go over the bridge that fell. Sure its not the fault of Google that the bridge is down, but most people expect Google to be update to date, or at least change an issue that's been for a decade
There is a section of road in my town that I'm guessing was suppose to have a bridge over the local river, but it never happened. The road leads right up to the river bank. In the 30 years I've lived here, there has always been a road block and warning. When a flood wiped out the warning and road block in 2015, they put a new one up. This is 100% the fault of whatever governmental entity is supposed to take care of stuff like that. Whether he was using Google Maps or a Rand-McNally road map is irrelevant because the first line of defense for having kept this from happening is on the local government.
How does this can happen?
As a driver if google tells me I should cross a bridge, but there is no bridge I look for a different route. I don't try to cross the nonexistent birdge, that's insane
The article states it was bitchblack at 11pm with no street lights. The issue has been known since 2013 but Google hasn't changed it despite requests.
It's not entirely googles fault, the bridge owner as well but both are being sued per the article
I'm pretty sure "bitchblack" has fallen out of favor as a term to describe something very dark.
"At the conclusion of the party, Mrs. Paxson took her daughters home while Mr. Paxson stayed to help clean up after the party. After Mr. Paxson assisted in the party cleanup, he drove his Jeep Gladiator towards his home in Hickory."
Philip Paxson wasn't familiar with the area and didn't know the bridge was collapsed, the lawsuit said. "Google Maps directed Mr. Paxson to travel home over the Snow Creek Bridge. Unbeknownst to Mr. Paxson, a very large section of the Snow Creek Bridge had collapsed in 2013 and was never repaired," the lawsuit said.
There was no artificial lighting, "and the area was pitch black at 11:00 p.m.,"
Seems pretty simple to me. I have put complete faith in Google maps in poor lighting before and it's literally never occurred to me that it may direct me over a bridge that doesn't exist.
I have put complete faith in Google maps in poor lighting before
And that is a very unsafe way to operate a two ton motor vehicle. As the driver, it is your responsibility to operate your vehicle safely. If you can't operate it safely in the given conditions, you are obligated to not operate it. If lighting conditions are so poor, and your vehicles illumination is insufficient, stop driving.
We test drivers and license them to make sure they know not only the rules of the road but safety measures. Putting "conplete faith" in an automated system is the very definition or irresponsible driving and should be grounds to lose ones license.
You ever see that episode of The Office (US) where Michael drives into a lake because his GPS told him to? It sounds pretty ridiculous, but I have no doubt there's people who put too much faith in their maps
From the article, it sounds like it was too dark to see the bridge was out, but then again you shouldn't be driving where you can't see either
But it’s a bridge on a road. There’s an expectation that if it’s out there would be barriers blocking it or GPS would be updated. The local government is primarily at fault, but Google is too. It’s negligent and they should do a better job with their incorrect data reports. I’ve had more than one report get denied when I wasn’t wrong.
On Lake Livingston in Texas when I was a kid there was one of the roads that went through the valley before it was a lake and was still there. Jsut went straight into the lake. Centerline was still painted on it. It was being used as a boat rampbut I was always surprised I never heard about anyone driving straight into the lake there. At theat time the GPS did show it still as a road straight through the lake which is weird because the lake was made well before GPS existed.
Looks like now they added some artificial land and made a proper boat ramp. I think it was old 190, apparently if you have sonar you can follow the road to the old path of the river and find the old truss bridge still under there.
Once, in the middle of the day when it was bright and shiny, I pulled into a lot. I realized it wasn't attached to the place I wanted to go, so decided to go through the lot and head out another entrance. Except the two lots weren't connected. In fact the lot I was in was raised about a foot higher than the other lot. My tires stopped right on the very edge. Again, this was in the middle of the day with the sun shining. And it was obvious as fuck, as well.
You think you would notice, but the fact is your brain pulls crap like this on you all the time. Right now you can't see the holes in your vision caused by your optic nerves. And it isn't that your visual cortex is merely taking data from one eye to cover a deficiency in another. Close one eye and the hole is still not visible. The visual cortex and the systems it is connected to let you see what they want you to see. I am not asking how could he not notice, but rather, what was his brain doing to make him not realize. Because even in pitch black, with headlights it would still be visible that there is no bridge.
Many people shut off their brain as soon as a computer is involved.
It was dark and rainy
Which is probably how it happened but yea doesn't seem like Google's fault.
So more reasons to be EXTRA careful
Y’know, I just posted about this in a comment chain on the original McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit. Someone was arguing that the lady was responsible and not McDonald’s The court can find more than one entity at fault and by percents, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. In the coffee case, they found the lady 20% at fault and McDonald’s 80% at fault. In this case, if it’s been reported to Google multiple times and they still haven’t fixed it, I can see the court finding them 10% or 20% at fault, and the entity that’s supposed to maintain the road and the sign 80%-90% at fault.
Y’all are arguing like it has to be one and only one party at fault.