Google Sued Over Fatal Google Maps Error After Man Drove Off … – Slashdot

Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive
Nickname:
Password:
Nickname:
Password:
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
I’m not a Google fan but I don’t see how this is their fault. Seems far more the fault of the state/county for not blocking off the bridge to prevent such an event from happening. You still have a personal responsibility to look where you’re driving. If a friend had given them the directions instead of Google, would they be suing the friend?
End of the day, the driver is responsible for where they drive and needs to be looking at where they’re going.
“It’s Google’s fault I hit that person because the directions didn’t say there would be people in the crosswalk.”
He who has the gold, gets sued.
Also the damn bridge was out for TWO YEARS. It should have been, you know, *repaired* during that time?
That’s not it. I’m pretty sure this is though. The house in the background, the road style, and the T shape street in the distance all match. If you move forward a few clicks, you can see the brick house on the left that matches the photo from the article.
https://www.google.com/maps/@3… [google.com]

Nine years. It was washed out in 2013
That’s what gets me for Google. While I agree that the landowners are very much the most liable party, one would think that Google Maps would have updated their maps, and their navigation, during that period. Their Map View certainly updated the images with a downed bridge.
There are pictures of the actual bridge in TFA. Both lanes of the bridge washed out.
It’s almost like infrastructure funding is important and shouldn’t have been on a back burner for the last 40+ years.

If a friend had given them the directions instead of Google, would they be suing the friend?
If the friend knowingly gave directions over a collapsed bridge, I certainly hope so.
your friend is not an live map with live directions.
and this does not look like an private road
Oh please. Google didn’t knowingly send the car over the bridge.

Oh please. Google didn’t knowingly send the car over the bridge.
They created the software tools, which have their name all over them, and they claim that their service is up to date. They received multiple reports of the bridge being out, and their own street view vehicles had taken photos of the bridge being out. So yes, yes they absolutely did knowingly send the car over the bridge. And they misrepresented their product as well.

End of the day, the driver is responsible for where they drive and needs to be looking at where they’re going.
Not quite. The entities responsible for blocking access are responsible. I, too, question Google’s liability but to pin it all on the driver is just wrong unless you’re hinting at suicide.
Agree with not overdriving your headlights, don’t hear that expression very often these days, but for the sake of the argument, I presume you’ve driven in thick fog once or twice in your life? It’s very common on the East Coast, especially in the Southeast, when high humidity meets cooler overnight temperatures at/near the dew point. I’ve been in it so thick all you can do is follow the white shoulder line to stay on course.
No idea that’s what happened here but it was my firs
Yeah, I’ve always wondered how people manage to do this. I mean, you have people driving off piers and into bodies of water, into the literal middle of nowhere, down forestry roads (typically very rugged, unpaved and unsuitable for anything but trucks) and such.
I mean, do people turn off their brains or something?
How does it happen?
I know if I’m driving, and the GPS tells me to go down an unpaved road, I’d probably be doubting it unless I knew my destination was in an incredibly rural area. IN other words, unless the road is under construction and there is traffic, I likely won’t take my car off paved roads.
And yes, I do use the GPS a lot because if I’m unfamiliar with an area, it helps me know how to get around. It also allows me when I miss turns because I’m trying to concentrate on driving and where the wheels are going than actually trying to nail which street is which street.
I mean, the nice lady in the box never gets angry if I don’t happen to follow her instructions so I feel free to make sure I’m obeying the law and the roads make sense to me (i.e., I’m not going to drive into a lake). Eventually they’ll have AI and learn to warn me to take roads way in advance
unpaved roads are an thing in some areas and if you don’t know the area you can take an map service route down an dead end road.

And yes, I do use the GPS a lot because if I’m unfamiliar with an area, it helps me know how to get around. It also allows me when I miss turns because I’m trying to concentrate on driving and where the wheels are going than actually trying to nail which street is which street.
I use GPS even when going to very familiar places like to the grocery store and back because by removing that tiny load off my mind on where I need to turn next I can put more attention on traffic and such around me. I know the computer will recompute the path if I miss a turn or decide to deviate from the path given so I’m still quite certain I’ll still get where I’m going.
What annoys me often is that most every mapping program puts too much “weight” on taking major roads. I know I can get where I’m going by not taking some interstate highway or some major thoroughfare through town. There’s just times I’d rather take side streets to avoid distractions of heavy traffic and/or avoid left turns not controlled by a traffic light. I’d like it if the software contained enough detail and some means to set preferences on avoiding left turns and known busy streets. I’ve read some advancements have been made in that direction so I expect things like that soon from the Google and Apple apps I use.
I recall a GPS device that would keep taking me back to the same closed road while trying to navigate through an unfamiliar area. I had to pull over and rummage through the settings to find some way to mark the path in front of me as closed. Just making it easier to mark a path as closed would go a long way in making GPS navigation systems less stressful. Again, I point out that GPS navigation makes driving less stressful as they are now, I simply expect them to make things even less stressful in the future to remain competitive in the market. Also worth noting is that drivers should be aware that bridges fail, and road maintenance crews should take care to properly close off paths that are not safe.

I mean, do people turn off their brains or something?
In a way I do turn off bits of my brain with GPS navigation. Once I put where I’m going in the computer I can find myself so “turned on” to paying attention to the road, or some unrelated thoughts in my head, that I forget where I was headed in the first place until the computer says I’ve arrived. I’ve been “trained” that I don’t have to think about certain details any more, and if taken too far then people try to drive over bridges that aren’t there.

In a way I do turn off bits of my brain with GPS navigation. Once I put where I’m going in the computer I can find myself so “turned on” to paying attention to the road, or some unrelated thoughts in my head, that I forget where I was headed in the first place until the computer says I’ve arrived. I’ve been “trained” that I don’t have to think about certain details any more, and if taken too far then people try to drive over bridges that aren’t there.
Doing this, you are also slowly losing the ability to navigate yourself, when the need arises (battery dies, etc).. That’s why I have the GPS only as the last resort. Especially going to new places I try to get the overview of the route and memorizing turn looking at the map. Not really that difficult, if one hasn’t killed their ability with using too much GPS.

Similarly, we (middle-aged people) used to remember easily 30-40 most frequently needed landline phone numbers, before mobile phones and their ph

Similarly, we (middle-aged people) used to remember easily 30-40 most frequently needed landline phone numbers, before mobile phones and their phone books became the norm.
I’m middle aged but have had a cell phone since I reached the age of majority. I memorized numbers, grew up on POTS (‘member when speed dial was a service you could pay for?), and early cell phones weren’t exactly intuitive when it came to fishing through contacts. The better ones would let you type letters via number pad and give increasingly narrower results, e.g., 72688 for “Scott”. The really dope ones let you do this from the dialer without going to the contacts screen. Sadly, most

Doing this, you are also slowly losing the ability to navigate yourself, when the need arises (battery dies, etc)..
I am aware of that. I keep an old road atlas in my vehicle just in case of some failure of navigation. Even so there’s often very good signage marking the path to important destinations like hospitals, shopping centers, filling stations, police stations, libraries, stadiums and such for entertainment events, and so on. Finding an individual’s home might be made difficult in this case but assuming I have an accurate address and the roads are marked in some numerical and/or alphabetical order then people c
that most every mapping program puts too much “weight” on taking major roads. I know I can get where I’m going by not taking some interstate highway or some major thoroughfare through town. There’s just times I’d rather take side streets
Pretty darned sure i’ve seen options for Shorter distance, “Avoid highways” and “Avoid left turns” avoidances on my Garmin.. if the major road is getting weight, then it’s likely because that route has a lower drive time once the higher speed limits for the major road are
I mean, do people turn off their brains or something?
Yes, it’s called “distracted driving.” They’re trying to pay attention to the road while also trying to pay attention to the voice of the navigation system, and the cognitive burden of trying to do both at the same time is too great.
At some point, I expect a nav system software vendor to argue that a crash wasn’t their fault because the driver was distracted by their own nav system.
I see a number of Dunning-Kruger drivers in this thread. This was apparently at night, in the rain, in an unlit area, and on a route the driver was unfamiliar with. There was no barricade or warning that anything was wrong. In those conditions, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to blame this on the driver in any way. That bridge was a deathtrap waiting to happen.
As a side-note, I also know from personal experience how !@#$ hard it is to get a change through to Google Maps. The name of the park across my

I also know from personal experience how !@#$ hard it is to get a change through to Google Maps. The name of the park across my house was listed incorrectly.
My employer has two offices. Our original/main campus and a newer (three years old) admin office in a different city. Google Maps keeps changing the admin location to the name of the business that owned the building before us and marks it “permanently closed”. Then the autocorrect algorithm sends would be visitors to a similarly named but throughly unrelated business on the other side of town, 45 to 60 minutes away, depending on traffic.
We submit corrections, they fix it, and a month later it’s “fixed” back to the former business. The best part is they demand photographic proof, which we provide, and said proof (picture of our sign with name/logo and building behind it) also exists in Street View. They could quickly verify this with their own data, yet here we are, Round #5 of this silly game. We’re not important enough to command five seconds of a human being’s attention at His Lordship Google and whatever automated algorithmic process they have in place is broken.
> Seems far more the fault of the state/county for not blocking off the bridge to prevent such an event from happening.
Did you even read the article? The owners of the bridge are also being sued.
The barricades had been removed. The accident happened at 11 pm during a rainfall and there were no lightposts.
These are the conditions in which accidents happen.
I know not to trust Google maps to be accurate, because I follow the IT news on sites such as this, and so I know what attitude Google has towards map accuracy. The average Joe does not.
But is always being shitty a viable defence?
Definitely the cognizant local gov’t’s fault. The barricades got stolen? How tough is it to back up a dump truck and dump a big load of sand on the approach to the non-existent bridge and block access? That’s not gonna get stolen, either.

Google maps are free to use with no guarantee of accuracy.
Not so fast. Yes, the base Android is open source, but Google’s addons, like the App Store (or maps) aren’t free. Manufacturers pay Google money for the Android Google maintains. Google makes money off all these apps.
Who owned the land the bridge was on, and who specifically removed and didn’t replace the barricade? I think they deserve some blame in the death. (Even if it’s BLM land or city land or whatnot.) If there were a bunch of nails in the road and everyone started getting flat tires, do you think it would be entirely the driver’s fault and that the DOT of that particular state should get no blame?

I’m not a Google fan but I don’t see how this is their fault
If they lose, it’s because they were notified that the road was out but did nothing about it.
A) This is less of a “how am I supposed to know to not hit pedestrians unless you tell me?” situation, and more of a “company knowingly allowed a defective, unsafe product remain on store shelves” situation.
Goods and services generally have an obligation to be fit for their intended use. Google will tell you that they maintain an updated map service for public use. Google was notified multiple times over the course of the 9 years the bridge was out that the bridge had collapsed, yet failed to take action. Google itself had direct knowledge that the bridge was collapsed—Google’s own Street View cameras documented nearly a decade of pictures showing the collapsed bridge, with the latest being from May 2023 (none of which you can find now because Google removed the last 9 years of images once the suit hit the news)—yet failed to take action.
In failing to maintain their data, Google allegedly acted negligently, no different than if you had failed to recall your physical product after numerous warnings that harm was imminent.
B) Do others bear blame as well? Of course! The people who vandalized the barricades, causing them to be removed, bear blame. The city or workers who removed the vandalized barricades without replacing them bear blame. The city or owners of the land who failed to maintain their road, or at the very least illuminate the hazard, bear blame.
C) And the driver, of course, bears blame. That said, it was 11pm on a rainy night on a road that lacked streetlights, and if you look at various pics the road appears fine from a distance because the guardrails are still intact and the 20 foot drop would have looked black—like a shallow puddle on a rainy night—until his headlights were close enough to illuminate the other side, at which point it’d likely be too late. And even if it wasn’t, there were trees and bushes across the road on the other side, drawing his attention away in the fraction of a second in which he might have been able to respond. Even at typically safe speeds, he’d have been hard-pressed to stop in time, especially so on rain slicked roads.
It’s easy to blame the driver, but the fact is that any responsible, reasonable driver would’ve had difficulty avoiding that same outcome if put into that entirely avoidable situation.

Google’s own Street View cameras documented nearly a decade of pictures showing the collapsed bridge, with the latest being from May 2023 (none of which you can find now because Google removed the last 9 years of images once the suit hit the news)
That’s called consciousness of guilt. Did whomever made that boneheaded decision check with legal? Even if plaintiff’s counsel failed to get copies beforehand it would have come out in discovery. Hiding it offers no benefit whatsoever. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

That’s called consciousness of guilt. Did whomever made that boneheaded decision check with legal? Even if plaintiff’s counsel failed to get copies beforehand it would have come out in discovery. Hiding it offers no benefit whatsoever. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
My thought as well. You can still see images of the collapsed bridge from some distant angles, but yeah, I was chatting with someone earlier about this and the versions of the images he had specifically linked a few minutes earlier were gone by the time I got to them. Only images from a decade ago (pre-collapse) were left.
No one was conscious of it, the google street drivers weren’t conscious it was a permanent outage, the computers aren’t conscious period.
PS. Oops you meant removing it, nevermind.

A) This is less of a âoehow am I supposed to know to not hit pedestrians unless you tell me?â situation, and more of a âoecompany knowingly allowed a defective, unsafe product remain on store shelvesâ situation.
Hammers are far more dangerous than Google maps yet they remain on store shelves and unlike Google maps actually come with an implied warranty. Go figure.

Goods and services generally have an obligation to be fit for their intended use.
What exactly do you believe is “intended” and by whom? Google maps has never advertised itself to be perfect and infallible or meet any kind of defined quality standard. In fact the use of maps is explicitly “at your own risk”.
“When you use Google Maps/Google Earth’s map data, traffic, directions, and other content, you may find that actual conditions d

“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. Youâ(TM)re responsible at all times for your conduct and its consequences.”
That’s a long winded way of saying “Not responsible for broken windshields” and those signs don’t absolve someone of liability for negligence (unsecured load) either.

Another way of putting it… Why didn’t anyone else after a decade of the bridge being broke suffer the same fate?
They had just removed the barricades due to vandalism, making it possible for someone to act on Google’s directions for the first time. Sure enough: person dies shortly thereafter.

Hammers are far more dangerous than Google maps yet they remain on store shelves and unlike Google maps actually come with an implied warranty. Go figure.
I recall an armed robbery being reported in the area some time ago, with the robber armed with hammers. If people believe that someone wielding a pair of hammers is “unarmed” then they’ve never hit their thumb with a hammer, or likely never lifted one.
Also reported in the news was a charge of “assault on a peace officer with a deadly weapon”. What weapon was used? An automobile.

Looking at the size of the road and where it was at night in the rain… really hard to understand what possible “safe speed” could have resulted in the driver not noticing the absence of a bridge.
Another way of putting it… Why didn’t anyone else after a decade of the bridge being broke suffer the same fate?
My guess is that the area sees so little traffic by people from outside the area that it took someone that is unfamiliar with th
Google probably didn’t want to act on the information for a couple of reasons.
1. Trolls often report things are broken or closed when they aren’t. Some do it for fun, others to try to reduce traffic in their neighbourhood.
2. Even if Street View shows a broken bridge, most bridges get repaired and their cameras won’t be visiting for another few years so they consider it a temporary problem.
That’s why Google only acts on more official data from local government and the like, or when they get a lot of reports
Having a section of road missing is such a rare occurrence that unless you’re in the Andes, nobody drives with “make sure the road isn’t missing” as a criterium. You drive at a normal speed in the assumption that the road will continue.
Depending on the road layout, you may not notice anything amiss until it’s too late to avoid an accident.
Nothing overrides the responsibility of the driver to judge the conditions on the ground at the time.
The driver put themselves in a situation where they could not judge (100% pitch black road and zero chance of seeing unmarked hazards) and handed their life over to the computer, trusting it 100% for some reason. Sadly, it did not go well in this case.
I don’t think you get to blame the computer though… GPS can have errors, and Google never recommended you rely on the navigation directions and drive wit
And what if the bridge had collapsed that night? Would it still be Google’s fault, or would it be the fault of the inattentive driver who did not realize the bridge had collapsed?

If the win against Google, it will be a gift to the big map overlords
Google is the big map overlord. In the last three cities I’ve called home Google has road closures in Maps almost immediately. They even beat the local news/radio traffic report to them sometimes. I’m kinda shocked a road could be closed for years and not make it into Google Maps.
In some extenuating circumstance (imagine it was very foggy) I can see how this could happen through no fault of the driver. Bulk of the blame goes to local authorities, no barricades is a huge fail, but still, not unreasonable to expect your GPS not to direct you to a bridge that hasn’t existed for years. 🙁
Heavy fog and/or nigh time with no street lighting could make it impossible to see that there is no bridge. Still, most of the fault is with the city or whoever had to put the barricades/signs and didn’t do that.
The point is in the second line of the summary. I know that’s a lot of words to get past, but:

“Google failed to correct its map service despite warnings about the broken bridge two years before the accident, according to the lawsuit”
I use traditional GPS, the maps there get updated once in a while and they are not always correct. I can convert open street map and install that, but I never assume that the map is 100% correct.
Hell, sometimes I don’t even use GPS if I have been there before enough times to remember the route. Sometimes there is road work etc that makes my “map” incorrect.
The state should have put up barriers and signs. The driver should have looked where he was going. Those are the primary ones. Yes, Google map should hav
The bridge is on private property, so the state had no authority. The barriers that were there (in 2019 on Google Street View) were apparently removed.

The point is in the second line of the summary. I know that’s a lot of words to get past, but:

“Google failed to correct its map service despite warnings about the broken bridge two years before the accident, according to the lawsuit”
The point is “according to the lawsuit,” and its claim still needs to be proven. It would stun me if Google ignored years of warnings, but I guess you never know.
Apparently the bridge was destroyed in 2013 and never fixed. Google probably had some reports about it in the last 9 years.
How about Rand McNally? What does the road atlas show?
How about AAA? What do their maps show?
etc.
Heavy fog and/or nigh time with no street lighting could make it impossible to see that there is no bridge.
This would still be Unsafe driving. If your visibility is limited, then the driver is Legally responsible to stop or drive at such reduced speed to assure that you can stop before hitting any obstacle, Or: in this case stop before the point where the end of the road once it becomes visible.
There are things that I expect when driving and there are things that I don’t.
For example. when driving (in poor visibility) I know to look out for other cars (may not have their lights on), people and animals on the road. I usually do not expect the road to not be there or, say, an anti-vehicle mine to be placed on the road. I’m sure people in countries currently or recently at war are looking out for mines when driving, but I am not.
If it’s heavy foggy and dark it may not be possible to see the road, but, you know, you just assume the ground is there. There may be things on the road you may not want to hit, but the road/bridge itself should just be there. Also – a road is usually dark, a hole in place of the road is also dark. At night it may not be much of a difference and it is extremely rare that there is a big hole where the road used to be (in countries not currently/recently at war).
Still, I’d say the fault lies with the state (no barriers or signs), a bit less of it with the driver (he didn’t look where he was going) and almost no fault lies with Google for not updating the map.
If conditions prevent you from seeing what is ahead, you should STOP DRIVING, not simply proceed ahead and hope for the best.

It is completely unreasonable that you would proceed to drive off it, however.
In the pitch dark? Ask any cop, fireman, ambulance crew or other type of first responder. People have driven off roads, off of piers, off of cliffs, into ditches, rivers, canals, lakes, the ocean, in front of trains/trucks/buses … the list goes on. All of this can happen easily enough in the dark, if it is snowing, foggy or raining. The odds increase again if you are a habitual smart-phone user and/or driving a high-tech modern car like a Tesla where no setting of any kind can be adjusted without looking
I’d blame the local authorities for failing to block a bridge that collapsed
The issue is they Blocked the bridge, but vandals removed the barricades: which creates a public safety hazard for Everyone using the road, Not just people using navigation info from Google.
The vandals quite clearly have the responsibility here, But can’t be identified.
The authorities Not regularly inspecting the bridge is problematic, As is the driver’s decision to go out in Pitch dark and relying on GPS navigation data blindl
If that happens, use heavy concrete barricades. Vandals will have to bring special equipment to remove them.
This is what was used in my country to block off roads during the pandemic (blocked off some roads in/out of cities so that fewer checkpoints would be needed).
https://klaipeda.diena.lt/nauj… [diena.lt]
Those concrete blocks would be rather difficult to remove.
It’s a private bridge on a private road. That makes it harder to blame “the authorities”.
The authorities in this case would be the property owner/operator who have the right to control that roadway. They had installed only what looked like temp barricades for a short-term closure for repairs, and the barriers were missing for some reason during the accident.

For years before the accident, local Hickory residents had been pleading with road officials to fix the bridge or install stronger barricades before someone was injured or killed. However, it was not accepted. Multiple residents also repeatedly contacted Google about the bridge collapse, but Google did not respond.
still, not unreasonable to expect your GPS not to direct you to a bridge that hasn’t existed
Not unreasonable to expect, But that doesn’t give a legal right to error-free navigation guidance.
I’m pretty sure that before you can use the GPS in the first place you clicked Agree to a set of product terms that explains there can be errors in the guidance.
Tragic as this may be… the GPS does not cause the incident. The chain of causation is Interrupted, because the driver has a decision to Rely on th
And why are people in North Carolina allowed to drive a car while blind?
Apparently its an unlit area at night. I can definitely imagine that even if one is paying complete attention that it would be pretty darn hard to recognize that there is a gap and brake in time. That said, I don’t think this is on Google. One could remove GPS from the scenario and have precisely the same result.
Sounds to me like the bridge maintainers are to blame here, if they aren’t fixing the bridge then they really need permanent barriers so that “vanadals” can’t remove them.

Sounds to me like the bridge maintainers are to blame here, if they aren’t fixing the bridge then they really need permanent barriers so that “vanadals” can’t remove them.
In the article it mentions that they’re part of the lawsuit, it’s just that google is the “big boy” in the lawsuit, and this is slashdot so gets the attention.
self driving cars are going to make errors like this and we can’t let the big ones off the hook for there bad data.
Is there any description of what kind of vandalism the barricades suffered? Were they spraypainted with graffiti, or were they smashed to toothpicks?
You mean anywhere beside NC.

And why are people in North Carolina allowed to drive a car while blind?
I’ve been informed by ZZ Top that you can get arrested for driving while blind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?… [youtube.com]
Pretty sure that if caught in the act of driving while blind that there will be an arrest rather than a mere warning or citation.

Might as well sue the Dukes of Hazard for the idea gone wrong while she’s at it.
I can overlook the mistake of placing Dukes of Hazzard in North Carolina rather than Georgia since the TV show didn’t want to be specific on where the events took place but anyone that wants to claim to be a fan should know that it’s “Hazzard” (with a double ‘z’) and not “Hazard” (single ‘z’).
I agree that this lawsuit is without merit. Google has every interest to keep the maps accurate but it is still up to the driver to pay attention to road conditions, and for road maintenance crews to properly mark dan
i write tuning software for engines.
someone uses my log analyzer and without paying attention, adjusts their throttle table so as soon as you touch the throttle its 100% and then kills a kid
my fault?
hows that different from Google maps in this case?
makes me not want to make software anymore
False equivalence because Google Maps provides directions, but does not directly control the vehicle. The tuning software directly controls the engine throttle.
Google Maps provides a service to the general public. “Someone,” tuning software implies a single customer.
Thanks for playing.
He had 2 kids who went home in the wife’s other vehicle. They didn’t Wylie Coyote off a bridge into the water.
So many others already commented on the personal responsibility part, no need to pile on further.
What the article doesn’t say is who actually owns the bridge, only the land it sits on. It isn’t clear if any of the 5 defendants have any responsibility at all for bridge maintenance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?… [youtube.com]
google may need local guides to check map data issues and not someone in CA or maybe someone not even in the USA to be the one to be the map admin.
Look at the picture, imagine it in the dark with no lighting. Now it’s still tempting to say, “there’s all this greenery, it would show in your headlights”. Sure it would, but what’s the speed limit? You process that something is wrong. You hit the brakes, but if it was wet and had leaves on it (because nobody was driving there) you don’t get as much traction. Such a scenario reminds me of the time I hit a suddenly un-plowed section after a snow storm, also at night. It was like a wall of white was co
If the scenario is that it’s dark, and wet, why would you try to hit the speed limit? (Not a criticism of the driver in the story, just thinking about the first line of your scenario.)
If you drive without being to stop within the distance you can see you’ll hit trouble eventually.
As in most disasters, a detailed analysis shows there were many things going wrong to contribute to the error. Reading through the legal complaint, and presuming it to be reasonably accurate, as well as looking at Google’s map data myself, I’d tentatively observe:
(1) The bridge washed out from a flood, obviously a defect, creating a hazard. (2) The owner, a private party, in control of the bridge never repaired the damage. (3) The barriers put up were of a temporary nature (frames not fastened in place, etc.), even though the bridge was a continuing hazard over a period of years. (4) One or more vandal(s) damaged the barriers in some unspecified way, (5) prompting the owner to remove the barriers for repair. (6) The owner left the hazard without any form of warning, including no warning signs in advance of the missing barriers, while the barriers were being repaired (7) it was a dark, and perhaps stormy night, with no lighting at the site (8) there are observable level changes in the road, which could have limited the visibility of the bridge-out condition (9) [a] Google maps chose a route over the bridge, even though [b] they were apparently notified at least twice that the bridge had been washed out, and [c] local GIS data indicated the route was interrupted at this location, and [d] other mapping systems that compete with Google had been updated, and [e] Google itself, when driving in the immediate area to update their Google images in 2019 for Google Street View, failed to photograph or update this road in 2019, perhaps demonstrating actual knowledge that the road segment should have been deleted in Google Maps. They did cover the road segment in 2012 for Google Street View, before the bridge was washed out in 2013.
In fact, if you look closely on the 2019 Google Street View image, you can see down the road to the barriers.
https://www.google.com/maps/@3… [google.com]
The court will presumably weigh the magnitude of these and other contributing factors adjusted by the depth of each of the defendant’s pockets. Google may have the deepest pockets, and may not be entirely blameless, but shouldn’t be picking up the whole tab.
Looking at the picture in the article, the guardrails are still there, despite the bridge being washed out. This is also a contributing factor, giving the illusion that there is a proper road in place.
There were more pictures, including some from 2023. They removed them all from to before the bridge washed out after the lawsuit hit the news.
Google Maps knew it was south of the Masonâ”Dixon line. Since it was, it knew about the historical documents of the Dukes of Hazzard. Therefore, the AI determined that a bridge being out didn’t bother a Southerner as a good Southerner would just jump the car as detailed in the historical documents.
The AI didn’t realize that all Southerners were not same.
Every GPS onboard aircraft has this label on it: “not to be used as primary navigation aid”
Remember, GPS is foremost a military service by and for the U.S. DoD. Inertial navigation systems do work even when the U.S. army decides to offset the coordinates of GPS satellites. INS work when GPS is blocked. And so do your eyes. Use them.

The OPERATOR of a motor vehicle is RESPONSIBLE for the safe operation of that vehicle.
Let me propose a scenario. You’re going down highway 1 in California which north of San Francisco hugs cliffs above the ocean. Speed limit is 50mph. There’s a turn coming up, but you don’t see how sharp of a turn it is while approaching it. The highway department normally puts a yellow caution sign ahead of the curve with the number 30 printed on it, letting you know that the safe speed around that curve is 30mph. But someone stole the sign, or the sign got ran over and the highway department didn’t fi

because at the end of the day the OPERATOR of the motor vehicle is RESPONSIBLE.
It’s fairly common in the US for bartenders/restaurateurs to catch criminal charges after a patron they over-served decides to drive drunk and injures/kills someone. If a bartender can face criminal liability for a decision someone else makes that ends in tragedy, surely Google can face civil liability for a defective product that set the stage for a tragedy.
Driver may or may not have screwed up in the moment. What brought him to the moment in the first place?
There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.
Google Mourns Veteran Engineer Luiz Andre Barroso Who Invented the Modern Data Center
Rishi Sunak Presses On With Net Zero U-Turn
This login session: $13.99

source