Google sued for negligence after man drove off collapsed bridge while following map directions

fry@fry.gsmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 72 points –
Google sued for negligence after man drove off collapsed bridge while following map directions
abcnews.go.com
26

Ok, I’m not trying to side with google here, but from what I read it seems like he just went over a ledge that wasn’t marked, but also was enough of a problem it could be seen by multiple people.

How is it that the GPS is responsible for his death? Even in unfamiliar places I’m not glued to the GPS because there’s a certain level of awareness you need to have when driving.

It seems like it was during the day as well. My guess is he was looking down at his phone and not up at the road.

Get a windscreen mount for your cellphone so you can quickly switch between checking the GPS and the road.

Whenever I use directions, I look over the whole route first so I have a fair idea of what the turns are going to be etc before I even put the car in gear. Then you're kind of expecting what to happen rather than being surprised when a turn comes up.

Not everyone can afford a windscreen mount, but you're not wrong, it would be good to have your GPS on or near the windscreen.

You're telling us that someone can afford a car and a phone, but not a $15-20 Amazon suction cup or cupholder mount?

I use one of those that suction cup to your window except the bitch keeps falling off

I got mine from a Chinese dollar store for like $20 or less NZD. It's really not expensive and you can't put a price on safety. Even just wedging your phone between the dash and the windscreen using some blutak is effective.

I'm suing Google because they didn't mark the traffic or red lights around me so I just started gasing into people. Not my fault smh, should've been marked.

Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute should sue for the time they were driven into that lake.

I'm going to get downvoted to hell here, but if you defend google here, you should be defending Tesla when someone severely misuses auto-pilot.

Play games on AP and don't pay attention causing crash, not Tesla's fault. Drive off a bridge cause the GPS tells you to, not Google's fault.

You're responsible for driving your car at all times.

The biggest fault here would be whoever was in charge of that bridge. If it collapsed 9 years ago why was it not blocked off?

My exact first thought. And why not a billion BIG Red SIGNS saying shit like: "Collapsed Bridge ahead", "Warning: immediate death ahead", "What the fuck are doing?! Turn around", etc.

A GPS is a tool that aids a person

Tesla FSD is marketed as Self Driving

User error caused this man to go over a cliff. User error does not excuse tesla accidents when the user is supposed to be hands off. One was an accident caused by a person, the other was an accident caused by a machine attempting to make human decisions. There’s a huge difference.

I wasn't talking about FSD, I was talking about AP.

Although if you use FSD, to sign up, you need to acknowledge this (among other things)

"Full Self-Driving is in early limited access Beta and must be used with additional caution. It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road. Do not become complacent,"

If it leaves Beta in V12, and that warning is gone, there will be problems probably =( It's not ready to lose such an extreme warning. And it legit shouldn't leave beta until they take on liability and it's legit FSD.

2 more...

Is this another bait case trying to overturn section 230?

Google maps doesn’t do user supplied maps. 230 isn’t relevant.

Google was notified of the bridge being out nine years ago

Yeah, they should lose this one.

Nah I don’t buy it. “GPS says turn right off this cliff” is a problem between the wheel and the driver seat, full stop.

Right, because it's not the drivers responsibility to take basic saftey precautions like looking out the fucking windshield to see where he's going.

No, it must be the map's fault.

But even then, Google's directions can get weird sometimes regardless if they know of the closure. It happened to me a few weeks ago where a bridge was marked as closed on both sides in Google Maps: it would correctly detour me when going from East to West, but every time it insisted I should drive over the closed bridge when going from West to East.

Actually still does it, try following NY-31 in Lyons from both directions, Google would love to have you drive into the water if you're coming from the West.

Fuckin' google sent us down two bullshit roads in Wyoming. Fuck. Fuck google.

Man uses "free" service and has no common sense, dies as result.

???

So we should all assume free services put us at risk of grossly negligent loss of life? It wasn't just Google, the damn thing wasn't even marked. Did you read the article? It doesn't sound like this had much to do with a lack of common sense. There is a closed road by me that I have reported three times to Google maps over the past four years and it remains marked as open on maps - it is frustrating to have a reporting feature available and have these requests ignored / univestegated.

Whether it was free or not doesn’t really matter. I don’t agree with Google at fault because the bridge should have been blocked physically if it collapsed years ago. The law suit is against a bunch of property companies so it sounds like they added google just because.