Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago
Discuss!
I feel like it might be interested to add this. Said “bridge” on OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/35.78168/-81.28259
There’s a few photos from this article. It’s a dirt road, somewhere where you should (and he probably did) drive slowly.
Also look at this image of the former bridge from the lawsuit: https://i.imgur.com/CuKVarO.jpg
Most of fault lies with the road/land owner for not properly blocking of that bridge and for not maintaining it. Nearby residents have also tried to get them to block/repair the bridge properly, but they haven’t.
And they are luckily also getting sued in the lawsuit.
Googles should take some blame for not updating their maps for 9 years despite multiple notices from users that the bridge has collapsed.
Article + the full lawsuit: https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/washed-out-bridge-to-nowhere-on-google-maps-route-led-to-drivers-death-lawsuit/
Btw if you look at street view and satellite images, it clearly isn’t a dirt road.
I’m not going to talk about this from a legal standpoint because I’m not a qualified lawyer, nor do I know enough about the law.
This philip guy, as unfortunate as his death is, is not google’s fault. As the driver of the car he is the highest authority and should make decisions after weighing the information. I understand that it was a dark and rainy night, however he was overriding his sight distance, which is something you are taught not to do in drivers ed.
Although his death was preventable, the blame rests on philip first of all, then the property management companies (which the family is suing), and to a much much lesser extent on google.
Would he have taken this route if not for maps? Unlikely. Does this mean that google maps deserves the blame? No.
As unhappy as I am with google these days, this one isn’t on them - atleast not to any point of legal liability.
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.
The machine knows!
