Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago
Discuss!
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.
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.
In the case of paper maps, if they were notified of the bridge, and proceeded to publish a new version of the map showing it as operational, then yes, they should face consequences. paper maps don’t provide turn by turn directions though, so less safety critical.
That’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.
Not an obligation to proactively update the map, but if someone notifies them about a closure or other safety issue, in my view they have a duty of care to act.
Absolutely. Don’t know why Google is being absolved here. Yeah they’re not the sole reason the car drove off the bridge but they are a contributing factor and have a duty of care.
