Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago
Discuss!
neither the destroyed bridge nor the road leading to it had any barriers or warning signs to alert drivers of the hazard.
Well it seems clear who is actually to blame here.
Seems like most of the blame goes there but
a bridge that had collapsed nearly a decade earlier.
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. Google never responded to the suggestion, allege attorneys.
It’s collapsed a decade ago and they’ve even tried to get Google to mark it so on their maps, unsuccessfully. Google must have some responsibility to the maps and routing.
Please refer to the Google Maps Terms of Service: https://www.google.com/help/terms_maps/
By using the service, every user agrees to these terms.Section 3:
Actual Conditions; Assumption of Risk. 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. You’re responsible at all times for your conduct and its consequences.deleted by creator
As your own link states:
Ironclad is not a law firm, and this post does not constitute or contain legal advice. To evaluate the accuracy, sufficiency, or reliability of the ideas and guidance reflected here, or the applicability of these materials to your business, you should consult with a licensed attorney. Use of and access to any of the resources contained within Ironclad’s site do not create an attorney-client relationship between the user and Ironclad.deleted by creator
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You can’t just guide someone off a cliff and say “hey, I said I wasn’t sure if that’s the route, so I have zero responsibility”. The idea that that terms of service absolve them of any part in it is just lol
If that person drives off a cliff because they trust a gps over their own eyes, then that’s fully their issue.
It was a dark and rainy night and he was following his GPS which led him down a concrete road to a bridge that dropped off into a river
I think that might’ve hampered his ability to see well. Not sure how visible the drop off is in general, not to mention on a rainy night, so it could look like everything is fine and then the bridge just drops off to nothing, so it isn’t necessarily a simple case of “should’ve stopped if he couldn’t see” either.
In any case, even though the “issue” is undoubtedly his since he died and if you mean responsibility then of course everyone is responsible for their driving. I’m just saying that (imo obviously) there’s other parties responsible here too. Municipality/landowners for not fixing, marking etc the bridge so this doesn’t happen. Driver for their part in the actual driving and decision made during it. But also Maps for the routing and not fixing the map even though they were informed of the issue. Since we don’t know the specifics it’s impossible to say specifically how much each part contributed, but I’d say most of the responsibility is on the municipality.
Since we don’t know the specifics it’s impossible to say specifically how much each part contributed, but I’d say most of the responsibility is on the municipality.
I agree entirely. The local authorities should clearly block off and indicate hazards like this.
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i seriously doubt that he saw that the bridge was out, and then chose to trust the gps anyway. you’re attacking a straw man, and the real man isn’t even alive to defend himself. every time you go around a blind corner at more than 5kph, you’re trusting that nobody built a brick wall across the roadway since your last visit. it seems far more likely that, due to the particular geometry of the situation and the generally poor visibility noted in the article, that he did not realize until it was too late.
i seriously doubt that he saw that the bridge was out, and then chose to trust the gps anyway
Well yeah, in the article it says that visibility was bad. I was more just making the point that discretion is important when using a GPS. That said, I’d say that the local authorities fucked up the most. A bridge collapsed a decade ago and it’s not blocked off? It should be obvious that you can’t drive that way.
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I’d say municipality/landowners, Google and the driver themself.
Municipality, land owners for not marking it, fixing it, making sure nobody mistakenly drives there. Google for routing him over it. Also the driver too for their part. Though not knowing the specifics it’s hard to say how much responsibility everyone has exactly but I’d say most of it lies on the municipality/landowners. Depending on who is supposed to mark those things over there.
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Not necessarily. Firstly because I don’t actually think there is any requirement that maps are 100% accurate, Google never a claim made anywhere that they are flawless. Secondly because if the city / town / local authority hasn’t put up signs, it’s entirely possible that they haven’t informed map makers either.
So map makers are not responsible for inaccuracies in their map, and even if they were responsible, they may not have been told.
There’s levels of culpability and in this scenario Google seem to be right at the bottom, if on the list at all.
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I don’t think you know how the law works. Google are not legally required to have accurate maps.
Ethically maybe (although even then it’s highly debatable), but not legally so, no, the lawsuit has no merit
You randomly arguing the point doesn’t change reality
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Not really. I think they have a part of the responsibility but as with previous similar cases, I don’t think they’ll see any legal consequences.
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Not sure what part of my comment makes you unsure on what I think. Yes they have some responsibility.
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.
Yeah, suing google makes as much sense as suing the car maker for not making the car fly.
No??? It’s perfectly reasonable to sue Google here, considering locals had been asking the company to update the map for nigh on ten years. It’s negligence on their part at that point. When it’s dark and raining, you can and should expect that your GPS won’t lead you across a bridge that collapsed last decade.
I would agree if the purpose of GPS navigation was to allow you to drive with all your windows covered. It’s not. When you’re driving and can’t see what’s in front of you (because you’re blinded by something, because there’s fog, because it raining hard or because Batman is throwing smoke bombs) you have to slow down appropriately or stop entirely if necessary. I can understand following GPS indications and getting stuck in some mud but not falling of a bridge. If you don’t see the rode in front of you: stop.
There can be some culpability in Google’s direction, it doesn’t have to be all the blame.
It’s absolutely negligent of Google to suggest that route after been informed multiple times over 10 years the bridge is collapsed.
The expectation of safety should be on the local authorities. Clearly marking that the bridge is unsafe to drive over with signs and blocking off the area. While google should have marked it as an inaccessible route, it’s the local authorities that should be looking out for the safety of drivers in that situation.
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.
The company literally directed this man to his death. Why are all these commenters going to bat for a trillion dollar company that refused to pay a programmer for the ten seconds it would take to fix thee issue?
I once approached a red light and the satnav commanded me to “go straight”. I almost did so, because a robot voice told me to do it. Would it have been the map’s fault because it didn’t know the traffic light was red? No, it would’ve been me, because I didn’t pay **enough ** attention for a moment, following a command blindly. Drivers have to be aware of their surroundings all the time.
Here in this case there should have been a road block and hazard signs in front of it.
This all reminds me of the case where some people sued a weather app because it didn’t warn them of bad weather and they completely relied on a single source of information.
Because following a GPS blindly is stupidity…yes in this case it has been out 10 years… but what if it was out 10minutes or what if it was some other hazard in the road or some road workers fixing somthing… you should be paying attention to the road and signs…now I agree signs should have been there. But just because the satnav says okay doesn’t mean driver can just blindly follow, you are a dangerous driver not aware of your surroundings and in wet conditions going too fast for the distance you can safely see.
If it had only been out for ten minutes, then there would have been no way for Google to update the map. You realize the whole issue is that they’ve been contacted about it multiple times over around a decade right?
That is not the point when we say it could have been out 10 min…the point is there are all sorts of unmapped obstacles in the road so saying driving off a bridge is a maps fault is showing poor driving skills.
There were no signs or barriers, as the article mentioned, and it was a rainy night. This dude had no way of knowing or seeing something was wrong until it was too late.
It is simply not the responsibility of google to prevent this tragedy. It is firstly the responsibility of every driver to make sure to be able to see where you are driving and be able to stop in time in case of unexpected. What if there was a person in his path and he could not stop in time for example?
And secondly it is the responsibility of the local authority/agency to put up signage and block the road.
Sure, i am not a fan of giant megacorps either, and it makes sense to be angry at google for not correcting the wrong map data. But strictly from a responsibility perspective, i don’t think google should be held accountable here.
I also believe the thinking “directed this man to death” is too extreme. It simply is a map, with route information. There is no automatic driving or compulsion to follow its direction, the driver has to make safe decisions by himself imo.
What if there was a person in his path and he could not stop in time for example?
Then that would be on him, because google did not receive multiple reports of a person in the middle of the road for ten goddamn years, and it’s easier to spot a person in the middle of the road than it is to spot this
Why do you want a already too powerfull company to be in charge of road safety?
I want the local goverment to be responsible for that.
I don’t want them to be in charge of road safety, I want them to not suggest routes that get people killed
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.
There has never been a guarantee for a map to be absolutely precise and correct. Just because maps today are digital and get updated automatically - or are even something like “live” - does not mean that there can’t be any inaccuracies.
And that’s the reason one never relies on a map alone, but uses it as a guide.
I’ve seen road signs that were simply wrong. Always use a combination of informational input and always be aware of possible flaws.
Thing is, as the article points out, people had contacted Google trying to get this fixed.
There was more than one failure here. That’s why the family is suing more than one entity.
The family might as well sue the local medium that failed seeing the incident in their crystal ball.
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Given that there weren’t any signs or barriers, it sounds like the local authorities are the ones at fault here. It could even be that that didn’t file the proper paperwork to indicate that it collapsed. Google gets it’s information from some database and if their sources aren’t accurately reporting data as they should, google wouldn’t have any way of knowing that the bridge collapsed. Ultimately, hazards like this should be clearly blocked off. Google doesn’t have the power to do that.
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.
I always like to point this out.
In every single driver’s manual, it states having a 4 second window of visibility, minimum. On rainy days/fog/bad weather, more if possible.
That buffer is to help avoid unknown surprises.
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 you blindly drive over a bridge that isn’t there because a map says so, you’re an idiot.
He was thinking fourth-dimensionally.
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.
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.
Interesting. How ‘duty of care’ is defined and established? Never heard of the term.
It’s a common legal term in the UK. Wikipedia had a pretty good overview.
Ok, so we have:
the foreseeability of harm to the injured party; the degree of certainty he or she suffered injury; the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered; the moral blame attached to the defendant's conduct; the policy of preventing future harm; the extent of the burden to the defendant and the consequences to the community of imposing a duty of care with resulting liability for breach; and the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved.[25] the social utility of the defendant's conduct from which the injury aroseYou pretty much have to prove that Google knew that not updating the map info will cause death with some degree of certainty, that it’s possible for them to process all update requests in a timely manner or that if it’s not possible they should stop offering navigation because it’s utility does not outweigh the dangers.
I would say this is what we’re discussing from the beginning and this brings nothing new to the case.
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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.
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Realistically, a government couldn’t notify every single map maker, but my view is that the map maker should be obliged to act when notified.
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When I think of the situations that occur in everyday traffic and how people behave there, completely without google being involved, I am absolutely not surprised at the level of carelessness that radiates from such events. Though it could also be my lower trust in services like google maps because I have a deeper knowledge of the technology behind it than most people. There may be people who think of google maps as some kind of authority that has proven to not be wrong at any time…
If google had enough information and time to correct such map errors and did not out of neglect, they may still be held accountable. And I think that this is a good thing.
Safety regulations are written in blood, warning labels are written by morons (usually)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Paxson, who was 47 and from Hickory, North Carolina (about 60 miles north-west of Charlotte), was returning home from his daughter’s ninth birthday before the accident, his mother-in-law wrote in a post on Facebook.
In addition to Google, the Paxson family’s lawsuit names a number of private property management companies who were responsible for the land where the crash happened and for surrounding plots, according to the Associated Press.
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.
In 2020, an 18-year-old Russian motorist froze to death after he and a friend were stranded in a vehicle for a week after following a Google Maps route through Serbia’s “road of bones”.
In 2019, a truck driver in Jakarta, Indonesia, drove off a cliff after following a Google Maps route that was only meant for motorcycles, the Straits Times reported.
In 2015, 51-year-old Zohra Hussain died in a fiery car accident in Indiana after her husband, who was following his Nissan Sentra’s built-in GPS, drove off an unmarked toll road that led to a demolished bridge.
The original article contains 481 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 56%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
In 2020, an 18-year-old Russian motorist froze to death after he and a friend were stranded in a vehicle for a week after following a Google Maps route through Serbia’s “road of bones”.
The road of bones is not in Serbia, it’s in Russia.
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
How about we split the difference and say that Google should look into it when multiple people make the same suggestion over a ten year period?
And good luck using your eyes to spot this when it’s dark and raining
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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.
The machine knows!
Stop yelling at me! Stop yelling!
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?
I’m an OSM editor and I don’t want to go to jail because I made a mistake when drawing a building and some idiot drove into a wall.
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.
