> 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.
this seems very obvious to me? i imagine "state of north carolina sued for allowing a dangerous abandoned bridge to stay connected to the public system" wouldn't make a nice juicy headline (and i imagine the state of north carolina has less money to throw at random lawsuits)
It's up to the judicial process to decide if Google is liable or not. But in my opinion the county is most at fault here for not blocking off the road. It's an odd choice to go after Google since they have world class lawyers and the case would open a floodgate of lawsuits for Google.
When you file a lawsuit you generally name anyone you can possibly imagine being associated, and then let the courts dismiss people.
I've been named in a lawsuit before, where my contractor's employee was suing my contractor for non-payment on a job (not my job), but named me in the case anyway since my job was going on at the same time. I just went to court prepared to defend myself and the first thing the judge did was ask why I was named in the suit.
Then I was promptly dismissed from the suit but asked to stay as a witness.
Would we be discussing it here on HN if Google were not named in the suit? Would anyone other than the local newspaper have written about it? Probably not.
But there are currently over 1200 articles on this, including national and international coverage, and that publicity is probably very helpful for the lawsuit.
Maybe they're hoping Google will settle out of court. If they settle, they avoid the risk of setting the legal precedent they don't want. That might be worth the money to them.
The family could also just be doing it on principle. If Google had made the updates, the man would probably be alive today because he wouldn't have known about this (non-)route, so they may feel like Google shares some blame. The lawsuit and/or bad PR could motivate Google to make some kind of change, like better training or better support in their problem reporting system for tracking and prioritizing corrections related to safety.
It may be worth it to the family to take the gamble that Google would rather settle than go through a discovery process that puts their auditing process (a trade secret) in the public record.
Google is just one of the parties they are suing, it looks like they are also suing the local government and the landowner (the bridge is on private property).
It's obvious but probably you can't escape responsibility by just writing it on the terms and conditions if you are responsible for something. What if they put "we are not responsible for anything, use your judgement" on every product and sell dangerous products? I mean, IMHO they should be able to do that if they warn you properly(not just in the legal text) but that's just my opinion.
Is Google Maps responsible? I don't know but I can imagine someone claiming it due to the way information is displayed on the UI. Google maps always shows the information from position of authority, they are always very sure about the information they have and you don't have a clue about how certain they are bout what they tell you. I had multiple situations where Google Maps will direct me very confidently to roads that don't exist and once I had to stop and investigate if the road that Google Maps insist on is viable and the other time I had to turn back as the road conditions deteriorated from SUV-needed to T-80 tank needed. Negligent local authorities combined with authoritative assistant who is wrong and can't tell its wrong can be dangerous.
Maybe a UI with more clear communications is needed?
I'm actually at odds at what's Google responsible for exactly. Google isn't paid by the county to provide this service nor Google Maps is a paid service.
More customer support is needed. Article says bridge collapsed 9 years ago and people used the suggest edit feature and Google ignored it. Even if Google is not fully responsible for a person driving off a cliff, they are definitely negligent.
That the terms say that? Who is disputing that? It's completely besides the point of whether or not that term carries legal wait. You can't have someone waive away your duty to not be grossly negligent.
Speaking of obvious:
"The Tuesday court filing includes email records from another Hickory resident who had used the map’s “suggest an edit” feature in September 2020 to alert the company that it was directing drivers over the collapsed bridge. A November 2020 email confirmation from Google confirms the company received her report and was reviewing the suggested change, but the lawsuit claims Google took no further actions."
They had been on notice for ~2 years that they were directing people towards a collapsed bridge. I find it concerning the way some people respond to this issue, and the general concept of negligence, as it speaks towards their views on how we should treat others.
The bridge in question is about a mile from my house. I'm pretty sure the road it's on is not publicly maintained, as it's just a street within a neighborhood. And that's a neighborhood that doesn't have a HOA, so I don't know if anyone is actually legally responsible for maintaining the road or bridge.
There is always someone responsible. If it's private land, there is an owner of the land. If it's public land, then at the very least the county or city is responsible.
So is it obvious that the bridge is out? Did the incident occur at night, and was visibility poor? As much as I hate Google, I find it hard to believe they should be held accountable before whoever owns the road with a bridge to nowhere that isn't marked or blocked off.
If the article is correct google have had for years warnings that this bridge has collapsed. Now - of course the ultimate responsibility is to the driver because - you have eyes. Then it is to the myriad of people who have not put a traffic cone there. And lastly is to google for not updating their database.
yes but the neglience was presenting a route which doesn't exist
which isn't anywhere close to killing someone
what killed that person is whatever allowed them to drive onto a collapsed bridge without noticing it
where I live this bridge would have been fenced of, and not just with some easy to remove by trolls fences but (with construction vehicles) movable concrete barricades or larger wooden logs depending on the area
Yeah no - if multiple people reported this issue to Google Maps and no action was taken, then personally I consider Google eminently sue-able. I would say that most personal injury lawsuits would take this into account.
I got the location from LeifCarrotson on this comments page, who helpfully provided a link to the bridge in 3D Maps mode where you can clearly see the collapse:
(I'm writing this comment as root-level rather than replying to LeifCarrotson, for higher visibility, so people can see this is still not a fixed problem.)
IANAL...but Google still serving up the wrong data - ~1 year after the fatal accident, and also after the lawsuit was filed against them - seems unlikely to score sympathy points in the jury box.
Another comment showed the Google link where the route was blocked which got me interested. And the solution is: the bridge is mapped as one-way street :) ! (try swapping the start+end and it won't pass the bridge)
Very confusing... any maybe the reason why it has been not properly fixed.
Google Maps should change the way that edits work. My experience suggests the current approach is to require independent verification, via volunteers, of too many user edits.
If I were to update the hours of a local business with a photo, that gets addressed within a couple hours, since the photo offers a form of verification. But to correct the location of a feature often takes far longer.
A pharmacy in my community had its location wrongly recorded in Google Maps, leading to people trying to drive through a very wrong route. The pharmacists himself had tried and couldn't change his business' location. I made the edit (as a "level 7 guide" for what it's worth) and even then it required another 50 days before it was verified. In that case, it was likely awaiting another user to verify.
I checked the map today while thinking about it: Ten months later, the marker has been moved back, to the incorrect location!
I fixed the pharmacy location because Google Maps was hurting my pharmacist, a good guy with a small business that I like. But to go out of my way to verify other edits, I'm not quite sure what the motivation is. Google should pay users -- offer some small remuneration -- for correct edits and for verification of edits. They already offer similar payment for information in other contexts: offering Google Play credits with their Google Rewards survey platform. Why not employ that on Google Maps, which is earning them around $5B/year?
Another option might be to trust (then verify) for users who have a history of valid edits.
If I had to take a wild guess, your pharmacist's business is probably incorporated at the old address, and they haven't updated their incorporation documents.
Google periodically pulls those from public records, and most likely this is why the marker moved back.
That's possible, however I'm not changing the address, I'm changing the position of the marker on the map by 70 metres. Google regularly tweaks marker coordinates, in order to provide better driving directions, without changing the address.
Additionally, the wrong location, where the marker has reverted to, does not correspond to a building structure, rather it's in the middle of a greenspace. I've illustrated it here:
All of the other markers I've included in the diagram match what is shown on Google Maps; they are correctly positioned at the structure where the organization is located. One oddity of the location is that it is like a campus, hence all of the buildings share the same street address, but with different unit numbers (e.g. 9999 Hacker Road #5 and 9999 Hacker Road #8).
This sometimes causes businesses to show up on the map at their owners' house instead of the actual location. Or a restaurant's name will change to Obscure Name Pty Ltd LLC Co Inc because that's the name of their holding company. The last one happens unusually often in Australia I feel like, maybe because people outside the country don't know how to validate the data.
Yeah. It's frustrating. I'm Level 7 as well (I use Google Maps to help me remember if I liked a particular restaurant or not) and it took me 7 months to get my new home address (new construction) into the system and I'm not certain if my edits were even responsible. So, for 7 months, deliveries were problematic because "everyone" used Google Maps and my house didn't exit.
In my opinion it is obvious that marking / blocking off unsafe roads should be the full responsibility of a public institution. They cannot hand over any part of that responsibility to Google.
What if someone drove through there without using a navigation / map? What if someone drove through there using an offline satnav with outdated maps?
I would hope Google (or OpenStreetMaps!) is not legally responsible to keep their maps 100% updated and accurate, since it's impossible to do that.
Negligent in updating maps that they were being warned about over years. I don't personally believe this makes them liable, though.
I think liability of this is complex being that it's unclear to me who owns the bridge and road leading to it, as well as how obvious it is to a driver that they shouldn't have been driving on that road. There shouldn't need to be a wall preventing drivers from flying off every cliff, but if there was a normal-looking road leading off the edge it's a little different.
Because they knew they were directing drivers to a collapsed bridge for 2 years and did nothing about it. Sure enough, someone eventually went over it. There is no legal principle saying that both Google and the municipality can't be jointly liable.
All car mounted navigation systems have the driver confirm, paraphrased, that they are aware the save operation of the vehicle is their sole responsibility.
It is mind-boggling both that such a piece of destroyed public infrastructure can stay in that state for 9 years, and that no kind of safety barrier or even signage was put in place in that time.
The part that confuses me is:
The North Carolina State Patrol had said the bridge was not maintained by local or state officials, and the original developer’s company had dissolved.
So, nobody is maintaining the roads in that neighborhood? It makes very little sense. The roads in my neighborhood are owned and maintained by the neighborhood (not that state or county) and we (the HOA) carry liability insurance.
There's a relatively famous story of a former West Virginia mining town that had the only access bridge collapse, isolating the town via any route except private roads owned by the original mining company (that, due to bad blood via the way the mining town turned from a company town to a public municipality, the mining company refused to let the townsfolk use).
Because the bridge crossed the river separating West Virginia and Kentucky, each state (two of the poorest states in the Union) pointed at the other as being responsible for reinstituting the bridge. Neither did so, and the Federal government refrained from intervening.
Desparate to see something happen, the de facto mayor (he didn't want the job, but people tend to look for leadership in a crisis) hit upon a stroke of genius. You see, this was all happening... In 1977. The town's mayor wrote a letter for international aid to solve a humanitarian crisis... To the USSR.
It took West Virginia like a week to announce their plans to build a new bridge.
All this to say: bridges tend to connect two different municipalities because water tends to be a natural administrative and territorial divide, so it is not as surprising as one might think that they can stay down far longer than is efficient. Putting them back up requires two municipalities to agree on the cost structure... Municipalities that, worse than having differing goals, have all the long-memory animosities that build up from being forced-geographic neighbors, so they come to the table with a bag of opposing goals.
Exactly, Google for sure should have updated it but why had the city or even a concerned neighbor not put a fence or even a log or something there to block access to the bridge? A sign and a temporary barrier would have saved lives here.
Hell non-locals might have driven off the thing without GPS help, depending on how the bridge looked from road-level
I'm reminded of a certain episode from The Office...
People should be responsible for the machines they operate. North Carolina should be responsible for their roadways. Google _should_ update their maps but that's aspirational. It's clearly a hard problem to solve when no data exists.
I'm one of what Google calls a "Local Guide". All that means is that I'm active in Maps, frequently submitting fixes, closures, additions, pictures, and whatnot.
I think it's really cool that Maps has these community features (and they're often more up to date than even OpenStreetMap).
But the process is totally opaque. Sometimes you submit a random edit[1] and it shows up a minute later. Other times you can submit the same highly important edit (this road will be closed for months), multiple times, and it won't show up for months if ever. But beyond the initial confirmation that says thanks, they'll review it, nothing. No status updates unless it actually goes through. No request for additional evidence or denial with or without reason. Just silence a lot of times.
I wish they'd provide followups and really allow the local guide community -- their volunteer boots on the ground "ground truth" team -- more transparency and proper change tracking. We want to help. We live in these places and use Maps multiple times a day.
Maps's errors range from inconvenient to outright dangerous (my area has a bunch of fake stop signs that don't actually exist, and real stop signs that aren't on Maps, and I've nearly slammed on the brakes when it told me there's a stop sign when there isn't). And it's gotten a lot worse recently. Not sure if they're using more AI or whatever, but there's just wrong information everywhere, often for months if not years. I fix them every time I can, but the process is aggravatingly slow and seemingly random. It would be better to use peer local moderators instead of whatever invisible process they have now.
They don't lack data. Even the article says they received reports. They lack a functional pipeline to vet and approve that data in a reasonably timely fashion.
-------
[1] Side anecdote: One time, deep in my discontent during an election cycle, I marked a local political headquarter of one of the two major parties as a "Garbage Dump". It went through immediately and stayed for months, even making the local news. Every time you were in that area, the icon would prominently show up. Yep, political party X, still ever the dumpster fire. Got a kick outta that, heh. Sweet, petty digital vengeance.
It really reads like you wish Google Maps were OSM.
Why not contribute to an actually open database that benefits to everyone and takes your contributions seriously?
(I personally don't think that Google, of all organizations, needs to be helped by unpaid volunteers - and they can import OSM themselves anyway if they choose to)
What you describe are not community features, but rather "user-sourced one-way value creation," ie. you can't benefit from the content you contribute unless Google takes unilateral action to allow you.
Why don't you contribute to OpenStreetMap instead? That way it will be more up to date than Google Maps in your corner of Earth too (like it does in many areas). Organic Maps is a very good replacement for the Google Maps app, I am told.
>Maps's errors range from inconvenient to outright dangerous (my area has a bunch of fake stop signs that don't actually exist, and real stop signs that aren't on Maps, and I've nearly slammed on the brakes when it told me there's a stop sign when there isn't)
so you've almost caused accidents looking at your phone instead of outside the car at the actual road?
I'm also a guide and have submitted multiple road closed reports. One specific route takes people down a single lane dirt road to a creek that had a bridge over it a decade or more ago, but that is long gone. The people that live on that road average one or 2 people backing back out of the spot every single day. And no matter how many reports they get, they refuse to update their maps. Even with pictures showing the lack of a bridge.
The problem is that Google has a review process with a human in the loop for most of the submitted changes (unlike OSM). This makes it easier for them to negotiate relationships with data providers, but it also means a lot of things aren't enacted quickly enough to be useful.
> People should be responsible for the machines they operate.
Yes, but there are limits. E.g. if you're sold a car whose brakes are not fit for purpose, the manufacturer should bear some of the blame when you hit something. The alternative is that every consumer needs to be an expert (or consult an expert) before every purchase, which is a ton of friction for a functioning economy.
I'm not sure how much blame Google should bear in this case, but that's why we have a court system.
Never seen The Office, however 'people should be responsible for the machines they operate' is my exact feeling for a whole lot of technology. Thanks for the wording. I now have a concise way to voice my feelings about Autopilot regulation efforts!
Weirdly Google Maps usually knows about all the daily lane closures and closed exits on the interstate construction zones I drive through. Do state authorites have some kind of direct way to publish this information that mapping/navigation services can subscribe to? Or do they just rely on crowdsourcing this?
>It's clearly a hard problem to solve when no data exists.
If you read the article, Google had received reports that it was directing drivers to that collapsed bridge at least 2 years prior to this man's death, and google responded saying "they were looking into it".
If Google was told multiple times of the error and didn’t update their map, well, that’s negligence. You can’t recall a paper map, but you can update an online map easily.
> State troopers who found Paxton’s body in his overturned and partially submerged truck had said there were no barriers or warning signs along the washed-out roadway. He had driven off an unguarded edge and crashed about 20 feet below
The bridge was unmarked and wasn't barricaded. The court can assign partial liability to multiple negligent parties. The __average person__ expects Google Maps to be current, and Google Maps does provide minute-by-minute updates on traffic and road hazards. The __average person__ doesn't expect a paper map to be updated with the same frequency as Google.
Downvote this if you feel that you know the legal standards that apply here, have read the article and disagree.
disclosure: I am not a lawyer and I have not studied frameworks associated with NC state. I'm a guy who reads books
You keep describing the "average person", but this is not the framework that most law uses when considering negligence.
Source: Cases and materials on TORTS; Epstein and Sharkey; 11th addition; page 139
"It is sometimes said that the study of negligence is the study of the mistakes a reasonable man might make."
And then there's a lot more text that goes on to talk about what is 'reasonable' and not just 'average'.
Also, just because the average person wouldn't be harmed does not mean a party would not be liable, because there are non-average people like blind people or old people who must be protected.
Looking at the street views, I think it would be pretty hard for someone driving safely not to see the washed out bridge from far enough to stop. The speed limit is 25 MPH, the road is straight, and the bridge is downhill from either side.
I'm looking at that Bing link and concluding the exact opposite.
Because news reports say the barricades had been removed and were missing. And he was driving at night and in the rain. And there are no streetlights there.
It's a tiny short collapsed area that you're easily just not going to see until it's too late. You might notice that a patch of the road appears darker but assume it was recently resurfaced black asphalt or something -- not that the road was entirely missing. Depth perception doesn't work on a pitch black area of vision.
I agree that it's negligent to not have barriers or signs, and I feel terrible for the daughters and wife mourning the loss of their father, but I think it's shocking that someone would drive off a bridge that you can see is out from the air. For the past decade, hundreds to thousands of residents and delivery drivers and visitors to this neighborhood were likely given these same directions but did not die there. They saw that the bridge was out and turned around. It's a residential neighborhood; there will be no signage that says a child or dog is in the road! This is not a situation for an instruments-only landing in a plane, you have to keep your eyes outside the cockpit, even if your instruments say to drive on.
Edit - I also find it interesting that Google's map still shows the road as connected, but (now) refuses to route you over it, while Bing Maps shows the road as disconnected:
"I think it's shocking that someone would drive off a bridge that you can see is out from the air"
Why are you equating air-visibility and ground-visibility? Holes/gaps are famously less visible from a shallow angle.
Also, "everybody else avoided it" is a really poor defense. Most safety measures solve the 1-in-1000 or 1-in-100000 scenarios, not the 1-in-10 scenarios.
Edit: Previously I said I agree that the driver's awareness played some part in the accident, but I failed to read about the extenuating conditions. I think this was nearly 0% the driver's fault.
The comment on the changeset says "24th St Pl NE bridge over Snow Creek has been out for several years and will not be repaired. The road continues down to the creekside (and bridge wreckage) from both sides and is a serious hazard to drivers not familiar with the area. A man was killed"
> but I think it's shocking that someone would drive off a bridge that you can see is out from the air.
According to the article it was pitch-black and raining. How can you be "shocked" that someone would have worse ground visibility in those conditions compared to your clear-day aerial view?
And are you really "shocked" that you can notice a hole in the ground from the air easier than from in front of it?
There was a barricade for 9 years. It was removed 1 week before the accident.
> There was a barricade for 9 years. It was removed 1 week before the accident.
Can you link to a source for that? I'm looking but can't find it.
If there was an effective barricade that was removed, it would seem the person/people responsible for that are the most criminally negligent here. That sounds like a positively insane thing to do -- it's going to get someone killed, as it did here.
EDIT: found a couple of links:
"Typically, barricades are in place to prevent drivers from crossing the bridge, North Carolina State Highway Patrol said. But the barricades had been removed after being vandalized and were missing at the time of Paxson’s wreck."
That's absolutely a possibility, but even in those conditions - especially in those conditions - one should always be careful to not drive off a cliff, or off the outside of an unexpected turn in the road, or into a fallen tree, or into a pedestrian, or into a stopped car!
In about two months, I predict, some dark November morning here in Michigan will have hundreds of "accidents" because the first snows will fall. Some drivers will be cautious and slow, while others will be going 5 mph over the speed limit. The latter will slam on their brakes far too late given the icy conditions, and will rear-end the former. That's not an accident, that's a negligent collision. Seven months of clear roads have conditioned Michigan drivers into assuming that everyone else will always be going about the same speed. When that ceases to be the case, there will be a few weeks of adjustment. Years of following Maps directions, and seeing uninterrupted roads, conditioned this unfortunate North Carolina Dad into assuming that reliable GPS directions and maps were guiding him down an unobstructed road like any other. When that ceased to be true, it's sad but not entirely unexpected that this happened.
Therefore, I propose Google respond to this incident by deploying an automated "Netflix Chaos Monkey" approach to their mapping data: Every thousand turns or so, provide bad directions - guiding people down boat ramps or through forests, send the wrong way up a one-way road. Show graphical maps with straight roads where there's a turn, and turns where the road is straight, show stop signs where there's a stop light. Show the speed limit as 25 mph when it's 55 and 55 when it's 25. All of those things will happen accidentally, so make them happen intentionally and help drivers build robust error-handling practices.
That was the case here; 11pm, rainy night, after staying late to clean up after his daughter's birthday party.
Bing maps shows barriers, google shows a clear road. Apparently the barriers had been removed.
Normally I view these sorts of incidents with a lot of cynicism, but if you look at the road from street view, I can see how this would happen eventually.
Readit News
> 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.
this seems very obvious to me? i imagine "state of north carolina sued for allowing a dangerous abandoned bridge to stay connected to the public system" wouldn't make a nice juicy headline (and i imagine the state of north carolina has less money to throw at random lawsuits)
Not at all an odd target.
I've been named in a lawsuit before, where my contractor's employee was suing my contractor for non-payment on a job (not my job), but named me in the case anyway since my job was going on at the same time. I just went to court prepared to defend myself and the first thing the judge did was ask why I was named in the suit.
Then I was promptly dismissed from the suit but asked to stay as a witness.
But there are currently over 1200 articles on this, including national and international coverage, and that publicity is probably very helpful for the lawsuit.
The family could also just be doing it on principle. If Google had made the updates, the man would probably be alive today because he wouldn't have known about this (non-)route, so they may feel like Google shares some blame. The lawsuit and/or bad PR could motivate Google to make some kind of change, like better training or better support in their problem reporting system for tracking and prioritizing corrections related to safety.
Steve Dallas lawsuit?
Is Google Maps responsible? I don't know but I can imagine someone claiming it due to the way information is displayed on the UI. Google maps always shows the information from position of authority, they are always very sure about the information they have and you don't have a clue about how certain they are bout what they tell you. I had multiple situations where Google Maps will direct me very confidently to roads that don't exist and once I had to stop and investigate if the road that Google Maps insist on is viable and the other time I had to turn back as the road conditions deteriorated from SUV-needed to T-80 tank needed. Negligent local authorities combined with authoritative assistant who is wrong and can't tell its wrong can be dangerous.
Maybe a UI with more clear communications is needed?
My first thought was it's the county's fault.
That the terms say that? Who is disputing that? It's completely besides the point of whether or not that term carries legal wait. You can't have someone waive away your duty to not be grossly negligent.
Speaking of obvious:
"The Tuesday court filing includes email records from another Hickory resident who had used the map’s “suggest an edit” feature in September 2020 to alert the company that it was directing drivers over the collapsed bridge. A November 2020 email confirmation from Google confirms the company received her report and was reviewing the suggested change, but the lawsuit claims Google took no further actions."
They had been on notice for ~2 years that they were directing people towards a collapsed bridge. I find it concerning the way some people respond to this issue, and the general concept of negligence, as it speaks towards their views on how we should treat others.
IMO road hazards should be the responsibility of the property owner, what if someone got lost or even used to road to turn around?
This. I find it incredible and sad.
which isn't anywhere close to killing someone
what killed that person is whatever allowed them to drive onto a collapsed bridge without noticing it
where I live this bridge would have been fenced of, and not just with some easy to remove by trolls fences but (with construction vehicles) movable concrete barricades or larger wooden logs depending on the area
Counterpoint: For every person who reads this post, namdnay must mail me $1 million USD. By reading this post you agree to these terms.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/35.7822529,-81.2819178/3834+...
I got the location from LeifCarrotson on this comments page, who helpfully provided a link to the bridge in 3D Maps mode where you can clearly see the collapse:
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7815814,-81.2828119,82m/data...
(I'm writing this comment as root-level rather than replying to LeifCarrotson, for higher visibility, so people can see this is still not a fixed problem.)
Deleted Comment
https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=c3224526-5ada-4a41-b8f7-e854f...
Very confusing... any maybe the reason why it has been not properly fixed.
Nothing like a top comment on an HN front page story to get a company to take action, I guess.
If I were to update the hours of a local business with a photo, that gets addressed within a couple hours, since the photo offers a form of verification. But to correct the location of a feature often takes far longer.
A pharmacy in my community had its location wrongly recorded in Google Maps, leading to people trying to drive through a very wrong route. The pharmacists himself had tried and couldn't change his business' location. I made the edit (as a "level 7 guide" for what it's worth) and even then it required another 50 days before it was verified. In that case, it was likely awaiting another user to verify.
I checked the map today while thinking about it: Ten months later, the marker has been moved back, to the incorrect location!
I fixed the pharmacy location because Google Maps was hurting my pharmacist, a good guy with a small business that I like. But to go out of my way to verify other edits, I'm not quite sure what the motivation is. Google should pay users -- offer some small remuneration -- for correct edits and for verification of edits. They already offer similar payment for information in other contexts: offering Google Play credits with their Google Rewards survey platform. Why not employ that on Google Maps, which is earning them around $5B/year?
Another option might be to trust (then verify) for users who have a history of valid edits.
Google periodically pulls those from public records, and most likely this is why the marker moved back.
Additionally, the wrong location, where the marker has reverted to, does not correspond to a building structure, rather it's in the middle of a greenspace. I've illustrated it here:
https://i.imgur.com/kvYePAZ.png
All of the other markers I've included in the diagram match what is shown on Google Maps; they are correctly positioned at the structure where the organization is located. One oddity of the location is that it is like a campus, hence all of the buildings share the same street address, but with different unit numbers (e.g. 9999 Hacker Road #5 and 9999 Hacker Road #8).
“there were no barriers or warning signs along the washed-out roadway” for a road which was destroyed 9 years before.
In my opinion it is obvious that marking / blocking off unsafe roads should be the full responsibility of a public institution. They cannot hand over any part of that responsibility to Google.
What if someone drove through there without using a navigation / map? What if someone drove through there using an offline satnav with outdated maps?
I would hope Google (or OpenStreetMaps!) is not legally responsible to keep their maps 100% updated and accurate, since it's impossible to do that.
I think liability of this is complex being that it's unclear to me who owns the bridge and road leading to it, as well as how obvious it is to a driver that they shouldn't have been driving on that road. There shouldn't need to be a wall preventing drivers from flying off every cliff, but if there was a normal-looking road leading off the edge it's a little different.
Deleted Comment
So, nobody is maintaining the roads in that neighborhood? It makes very little sense. The roads in my neighborhood are owned and maintained by the neighborhood (not that state or county) and we (the HOA) carry liability insurance.
Because the bridge crossed the river separating West Virginia and Kentucky, each state (two of the poorest states in the Union) pointed at the other as being responsible for reinstituting the bridge. Neither did so, and the Federal government refrained from intervening.
Desparate to see something happen, the de facto mayor (he didn't want the job, but people tend to look for leadership in a crisis) hit upon a stroke of genius. You see, this was all happening... In 1977. The town's mayor wrote a letter for international aid to solve a humanitarian crisis... To the USSR.
It took West Virginia like a week to announce their plans to build a new bridge.
https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/print/Article/2433
All this to say: bridges tend to connect two different municipalities because water tends to be a natural administrative and territorial divide, so it is not as surprising as one might think that they can stay down far longer than is efficient. Putting them back up requires two municipalities to agree on the cost structure... Municipalities that, worse than having differing goals, have all the long-memory animosities that build up from being forced-geographic neighbors, so they come to the table with a bag of opposing goals.
Hell non-locals might have driven off the thing without GPS help, depending on how the bridge looked from road-level
People should be responsible for the machines they operate. North Carolina should be responsible for their roadways. Google _should_ update their maps but that's aspirational. It's clearly a hard problem to solve when no data exists.
I think it's really cool that Maps has these community features (and they're often more up to date than even OpenStreetMap).
But the process is totally opaque. Sometimes you submit a random edit[1] and it shows up a minute later. Other times you can submit the same highly important edit (this road will be closed for months), multiple times, and it won't show up for months if ever. But beyond the initial confirmation that says thanks, they'll review it, nothing. No status updates unless it actually goes through. No request for additional evidence or denial with or without reason. Just silence a lot of times.
I wish they'd provide followups and really allow the local guide community -- their volunteer boots on the ground "ground truth" team -- more transparency and proper change tracking. We want to help. We live in these places and use Maps multiple times a day.
Maps's errors range from inconvenient to outright dangerous (my area has a bunch of fake stop signs that don't actually exist, and real stop signs that aren't on Maps, and I've nearly slammed on the brakes when it told me there's a stop sign when there isn't). And it's gotten a lot worse recently. Not sure if they're using more AI or whatever, but there's just wrong information everywhere, often for months if not years. I fix them every time I can, but the process is aggravatingly slow and seemingly random. It would be better to use peer local moderators instead of whatever invisible process they have now.
They don't lack data. Even the article says they received reports. They lack a functional pipeline to vet and approve that data in a reasonably timely fashion.
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[1] Side anecdote: One time, deep in my discontent during an election cycle, I marked a local political headquarter of one of the two major parties as a "Garbage Dump". It went through immediately and stayed for months, even making the local news. Every time you were in that area, the icon would prominently show up. Yep, political party X, still ever the dumpster fire. Got a kick outta that, heh. Sweet, petty digital vengeance.
Why not contribute to an actually open database that benefits to everyone and takes your contributions seriously?
(I personally don't think that Google, of all organizations, needs to be helped by unpaid volunteers - and they can import OSM themselves anyway if they choose to)
Why don't you contribute to OpenStreetMap instead? That way it will be more up to date than Google Maps in your corner of Earth too (like it does in many areas). Organic Maps is a very good replacement for the Google Maps app, I am told.
so you've almost caused accidents looking at your phone instead of outside the car at the actual road?
Yes, but there are limits. E.g. if you're sold a car whose brakes are not fit for purpose, the manufacturer should bear some of the blame when you hit something. The alternative is that every consumer needs to be an expert (or consult an expert) before every purchase, which is a ton of friction for a functioning economy.
I'm not sure how much blame Google should bear in this case, but that's why we have a court system.
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Just because they aren't designed to fly doesn't mean car acquisitions don't need to be 'pre-flighted' and taken for a shakedown cruise.
https://contentpartners.maps.google.com/
https://support.google.com/mapcontentpartners/answer/144284?...
If you read the article, Google had received reports that it was directing drivers to that collapsed bridge at least 2 years prior to this man's death, and google responded saying "they were looking into it".
I mean shouldn't the road to the bridge be blocked/fenced off? If not isn't that clear neglience of the state not Google?
Sure Google routed someone to a path which didn't exist.
But so could have someone using an older map or who hasn't been around for years.
So either someone intentionally bypassed a road blockage.
Or the land/state massively messed up by not blocking of a collapsed bridge.
Through condolence to the family eitherway.
> State troopers who found Paxton’s body in his overturned and partially submerged truck had said there were no barriers or warning signs along the washed-out roadway. He had driven off an unguarded edge and crashed about 20 feet below
Downvote this if you feel that you know the legal standards that apply here, have read the article and disagree.
You keep describing the "average person", but this is not the framework that most law uses when considering negligence.
Source: Cases and materials on TORTS; Epstein and Sharkey; 11th addition; page 139
"It is sometimes said that the study of negligence is the study of the mistakes a reasonable man might make."
And then there's a lot more text that goes on to talk about what is 'reasonable' and not just 'average'.
Also, just because the average person wouldn't be harmed does not mean a party would not be liable, because there are non-average people like blind people or old people who must be protected.
Bing street view post-collapse: https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=c3224526-5ada-4a41-b8f7-e854f...
Openstreetmap shows the road divided by the creek: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/35.78149/-81.28311
Looking at the street views, I think it would be pretty hard for someone driving safely not to see the washed out bridge from far enough to stop. The speed limit is 25 MPH, the road is straight, and the bridge is downhill from either side.
Because news reports say the barricades had been removed and were missing. And he was driving at night and in the rain. And there are no streetlights there.
It's a tiny short collapsed area that you're easily just not going to see until it's too late. You might notice that a patch of the road appears darker but assume it was recently resurfaced black asphalt or something -- not that the road was entirely missing. Depth perception doesn't work on a pitch black area of vision.
https://i.imgur.com/WXIxLtp.jpg
with the Street View record from 2012:
https://i.imgur.com/cen89bg.jpg
I agree that it's negligent to not have barriers or signs, and I feel terrible for the daughters and wife mourning the loss of their father, but I think it's shocking that someone would drive off a bridge that you can see is out from the air. For the past decade, hundreds to thousands of residents and delivery drivers and visitors to this neighborhood were likely given these same directions but did not die there. They saw that the bridge was out and turned around. It's a residential neighborhood; there will be no signage that says a child or dog is in the road! This is not a situation for an instruments-only landing in a plane, you have to keep your eyes outside the cockpit, even if your instruments say to drive on.
Edit - I also find it interesting that Google's map still shows the road as connected, but (now) refuses to route you over it, while Bing Maps shows the road as disconnected:
https://i.imgur.com/D9dRF1B.png
https://i.imgur.com/4NcTIxZ.png
Maps link:
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7815814,-81.2828119,82m/data...
"I think it's shocking that someone would drive off a bridge that you can see is out from the air"
Why are you equating air-visibility and ground-visibility? Holes/gaps are famously less visible from a shallow angle.
Also, "everybody else avoided it" is a really poor defense. Most safety measures solve the 1-in-1000 or 1-in-100000 scenarios, not the 1-in-10 scenarios.
Edit: Previously I said I agree that the driver's awareness played some part in the accident, but I failed to read about the extenuating conditions. I think this was nearly 0% the driver's fault.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/35.78116/-81.28272https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/126938081
The nodes on either side claim that there are barriers here.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10072951700https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10072951701
The comment on the changeset says "24th St Pl NE bridge over Snow Creek has been out for several years and will not be repaired. The road continues down to the creekside (and bridge wreckage) from both sides and is a serious hazard to drivers not familiar with the area. A man was killed"
According to the article it was pitch-black and raining. How can you be "shocked" that someone would have worse ground visibility in those conditions compared to your clear-day aerial view?
And are you really "shocked" that you can notice a hole in the ground from the air easier than from in front of it?
There was a barricade for 9 years. It was removed 1 week before the accident.
Can you link to a source for that? I'm looking but can't find it.
If there was an effective barricade that was removed, it would seem the person/people responsible for that are the most criminally negligent here. That sounds like a positively insane thing to do -- it's going to get someone killed, as it did here.
EDIT: found a couple of links:
"Typically, barricades are in place to prevent drivers from crossing the bridge, North Carolina State Highway Patrol said. But the barricades had been removed after being vandalized and were missing at the time of Paxson’s wreck."
[1] https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/...
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/20/google...
In about two months, I predict, some dark November morning here in Michigan will have hundreds of "accidents" because the first snows will fall. Some drivers will be cautious and slow, while others will be going 5 mph over the speed limit. The latter will slam on their brakes far too late given the icy conditions, and will rear-end the former. That's not an accident, that's a negligent collision. Seven months of clear roads have conditioned Michigan drivers into assuming that everyone else will always be going about the same speed. When that ceases to be the case, there will be a few weeks of adjustment. Years of following Maps directions, and seeing uninterrupted roads, conditioned this unfortunate North Carolina Dad into assuming that reliable GPS directions and maps were guiding him down an unobstructed road like any other. When that ceased to be true, it's sad but not entirely unexpected that this happened.
Therefore, I propose Google respond to this incident by deploying an automated "Netflix Chaos Monkey" approach to their mapping data: Every thousand turns or so, provide bad directions - guiding people down boat ramps or through forests, send the wrong way up a one-way road. Show graphical maps with straight roads where there's a turn, and turns where the road is straight, show stop signs where there's a stop light. Show the speed limit as 25 mph when it's 55 and 55 when it's 25. All of those things will happen accidentally, so make them happen intentionally and help drivers build robust error-handling practices.
Bing maps shows barriers, google shows a clear road. Apparently the barriers had been removed.
Normally I view these sorts of incidents with a lot of cynicism, but if you look at the road from street view, I can see how this would happen eventually.
I think these deep image links work even if you aren't a subscriber. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...
Maybe it shows it, but I could definitely not call that "clearly", although that doesn't really matter anyway, as abundantly mentioned elsewhere.
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