Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago
Discuss!
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.
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.
As unhappy as I am with google these days, this one isn’t on them - atleast not to any point of legal liability.
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.
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.
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.
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.