Google sued over fatal Google Maps error after man drove off broken bridge
Google sued over fatal Google Maps error after man drove off broken bridge
Google allegedly gave drivers bridge route for years despite correction requests.
Google allegedly gave drivers bridge route for years despite correction requests.
You're viewing a single thread.
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.
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.
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