Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago
Discuss!
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?
The 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
Well 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Did 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.
Doesn’t sound like google’s fault, does it?
The article even mentions that other entities are sued but oh that sweet headline.
The bridge was broken years though, so Google should not have been using it for routes. The country is definitely at fault for not having signs up, but Google isn’t blameless in this.
Yeah, suing google makes as much sense as suing the car maker for not making the car fly.
Yes 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)
If you can’t stop within the range of visibility, you’re driving faster than road conditions allow. That part is on the driver. The lack of barriers or warnings is on the municipality.
So sue the county or who ever is in charge of erecting the barriers. Still not the map’s fault.
The bridge broke down years ago. Google is absolutely also at fault for sending someone down it, along with whoever didn’t have warnings up. Multiple entities can be at fault here.
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.
We 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.
How are you going to lose freedom or quality of life if Google is forced to maintain its services and provide you with better information?
counterpoint. 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
The machine knows!
