6 ms·

Google accused of directing motorist to drive off collapsed bridge

19 points by rwmj 3y ago

francisofascii 3y ago
> Barriers that were normally placed across the bridge entrance were missing due to vandalism, according to the Charlotte Observer. > The lawsuit is also suing three local companies, arguing they had a duty to maintain the bridge. Did the vandals steal the barriers? Or did the community remove the barriers temporarily? Sounds like this is where the blame should be targeted.
RugnirViking 3y ago
It does bother me how often people see something like this and go "wow how dumb, blaming companies for their own lack of awareness/stupidity" The guy died. His family want answers on exactly how it was that a bridge that had already collapsed was just left collapsed with a road leading to it with no barrier or roadsigns, both in the real world and in apps. They also sued the people responsible for the physical roadsigns and barriers, which were missing at the time of the accident. Exactly how negligent people may or may not have been will surely come out in court. They'll hear whether people tried to warn google that it was broken, and what happened to any such communications.
- jiofj 3y ago
  Na, the family just wants money. It's not some kind of 4D chess move.
  - baobabKoodaa 3y ago
    Ah yes, because when your loved one dies, that's what you immediately think of: how can I make money off this?
    - alternatex 3y ago
      If a loved one dies I will also not think to blame Google Maps for the negligence of local government.
- sfn42 3y ago
  I completely agree that the bridge should have been blocked off. After 9 years it shouldn't be a couple traffic cones (or nothing), it should be a solid barrier. This is on the local road authority. As for Google, absolutely no liability. They can't keep their map of the entire world 100% updated, that is literally impossible. Yes, they could have fixed it in 9 years but that's irrelevant. It could have collapsed the day before, there would be almost no chance for Google to update their maps and the guy would still be dead. It would just be more obvious that it's his own fault. You use maps for directions, some times they're wrong and they can't always be totally up to date. You have to deal with that. You are the operator of the vehicle, it is entirely your responsibility to make sure you are operating it safely regardless of what an app says, or what signs and barriers are present.
  - xzsinu 3y ago
    At some level, Google puts these expectations on itself. Features like live traffic updates, road closures and breaking news highlighted on the map tell the average user that they are a reliable source of up-to-date information about something as safety critical as the state of the roads. They use this perception to build market advantage. You can't do that and simultaneously blame the end user for not compensating for being misled, and it looks especially bad when the end user trusted you and died. If every route calculation was forced to directly tell the user "this is not a reliable source of information about your route, please use precaution," that would be a win. But Google probably wouldn't like being forced to call themselves out like that.
    - 3seashells 3y ago
      And they can track vehicles. A graph node on which for mine years no human has gotten from a to b should be algorithmically flagged as unusable.
      - mu53 3y ago
        [dead]
      - sfn42 3y ago
pierat 3y ago
How bad of a driver were they, that they didn't use their eyes to see the condition of the road? Sure Google could also have done basic map due diligence. Sure, barriers could have been kept up. But this isn't much functionally different than a tree falling across the road, flooding, sinkholes, or other similar hazards. You gotta watch the damned road if you're driving, NOT YOUR PHONE.
- robador 3y ago
  It was raining, night, and seemingly no street lights.
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Then slow down. If you can't even see the road ahead of you, stop. You can't drive if you can't see the road. If you choose to drive blind that's on you.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      Sure but also no one does that so the advice is speaking to only deaf ears. When was the last time you were driving on an interstate highway at night that isn't lit and slowed to a crawl to make sure there wasn't an unprepared sinkhole beyond your headlight view? Or actually checked that the overpass wasn't collapsed? Because at 75mph you aren't gonna stop in time if you only slam on your breaks when you see it.
      - sfn42 3y ago
        I always drive at a speed where I can stop the car in the area of road that I can see. If I can only see 10 meters ahead I have to be able to stop in probably 5 meters of road, accounting for reaction time etc. So then I have to go very slowly. I have completely stopped the car because it started raining so heavily I couldn't see the road. I am aware that many people drive recklessly. That doesn't change the fact that when they do so, they are neglecting their responsibility to keep themselves and others safe. When their recklessness has consequences, they have to face those consequences. Maybe if they survive and are rational people they will look inwards and understand that they could have avoided it had they taken their responsibility more seriously. This isn't a "no one does that" arm wavy topic. This is literally, in every sense of the word life and death. When you drive recklessly you endanger the health and lives of yourself and everyone around you. This is an extremely serious responsibility, traffic is responsible for the vast majority of deaths in modern society. Almost all of those deaths are caused by recklessness and neglect. I have known many people who have died in traffic. Some due to their own recklessness, others due to others' recklessness. I also know a man who has to live the rest of his life with the burden of having killed a 15 year old girl on her birthday, because him and his buddy wanted to race on public roads. I have absolutely no patience or sympathy for reckless drivers. Recklessness is a spectrum, obviously driving drunk or racing is more reckless than driving a too fast for the conditions but within the speed limit. But both are reckless. Both cost lives every day.
Panzer04 3y ago
It seems like the bigger issue here is a complete lack of signs leading up to the bridge - If it's a contiguous road I can see how someone might be lulled into a false sense of security. Ultimately, the final responsibility is the driver's, but there's very severe neglect on the part of the local government to allow the bridge to be unmarked and unsigned.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dannyphantom 3y ago
The boring context is that, in situations like this, the plaintiffs will indicate a large(ish) batch of defendants that will gradually slim down as the case moves forward in the court - the plaintiff attorney has a duty to cover all possibilities. Some of the other comments here already touch on who may be the more liable party other than Google. The public works department seemed to have played a game of passing around the 'accountability ball' which contributed to a tragic event. These cases generally take a pretttty long time to come to actually come to a close and it's an absolutely surreal and bleak experience the entire time.
nutate 3y ago
I drove into a ditch in Costa Rica following google maps. It was the end of any fantasy of ine that they still wanted to organize the world's information. Luckily it only cost $500 or so for the privilege of finding that out for sure.
francisofascii 3y ago
Here is the location of the damaged bridge: https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B046'53.6%22N+81%C2%B016'58.6%22W/@35.7815556,-81.2829444,18z https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B046'53.6%22N+81%C2%... You can see it you move out to the main road which has an more recent 2023 street view image.
wackycat 3y ago
If this bridge had just recently collapsed, I think google would be less at fault but it collapsed in 2013. 10 years is an awful long time to continue directing motorists to a collapsed bridge. Additionally, you think even if google missed user reports that the anomalous data of motorists always ignoring that direction should have triggered some sort of review. It's also awful that in 10 years no lights or barricades were added simply due to a game of "not-my-problem" by developers and transit authorities.
macintosh-hd 3y ago
Excited for this to end up as the next McDonalds coffee story… Google was notified several times over NINE years that the bridge had collapsed and they did nothing.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
The risk of technology was predicted by Michael Scott: https://youtu.be/DOW_kPzY_JY?si=CLFdmmo1zqyZste- https://youtu.be/DOW_kPzY_JY?si=CLFdmmo1zqyZste-
commiepatrol 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY

19 points by rwmj 3y ago

> Barriers that were normally placed across the bridge entrance were missing due to vandalism, according to the Charlotte Observer. > The lawsuit is also suing three local companies, arguing they had a duty to maintain the bridge. Did the vandals steal the barriers? Or did the community remove the barriers temporarily? Sounds like this is where the blame should be targeted.

RugnirViking 3y ago

It does bother me how often people see something like this and go "wow how dumb, blaming companies for their own lack of awareness/stupidity" The guy died. His family want answers on exactly how it was that a bridge that had already collapsed was just left collapsed with a road leading to it with no barrier or roadsigns, both in the real world and in apps. They also sued the people responsible for the physical roadsigns and barriers, which were missing at the time of the accident. Exactly how negligent people may or may not have been will surely come out in court. They'll hear whether people tried to warn google that it was broken, and what happened to any such communications.

jiofj 3y ago
Na, the family just wants money. It's not some kind of 4D chess move.
- baobabKoodaa 3y ago
  Ah yes, because when your loved one dies, that's what you immediately think of: how can I make money off this?
  - alternatex 3y ago
    If a loved one dies I will also not think to blame Google Maps for the negligence of local government.
sfn42 3y ago
I completely agree that the bridge should have been blocked off. After 9 years it shouldn't be a couple traffic cones (or nothing), it should be a solid barrier. This is on the local road authority. As for Google, absolutely no liability. They can't keep their map of the entire world 100% updated, that is literally impossible. Yes, they could have fixed it in 9 years but that's irrelevant. It could have collapsed the day before, there would be almost no chance for Google to update their maps and the guy would still be dead. It would just be more obvious that it's his own fault. You use maps for directions, some times they're wrong and they can't always be totally up to date. You have to deal with that. You are the operator of the vehicle, it is entirely your responsibility to make sure you are operating it safely regardless of what an app says, or what signs and barriers are present.
- xzsinu 3y ago
  At some level, Google puts these expectations on itself. Features like live traffic updates, road closures and breaking news highlighted on the map tell the average user that they are a reliable source of up-to-date information about something as safety critical as the state of the roads. They use this perception to build market advantage. You can't do that and simultaneously blame the end user for not compensating for being misled, and it looks especially bad when the end user trusted you and died. If every route calculation was forced to directly tell the user "this is not a reliable source of information about your route, please use precaution," that would be a win. But Google probably wouldn't like being forced to call themselves out like that.
  - 3seashells 3y ago
    And they can track vehicles. A graph node on which for mine years no human has gotten from a to b should be algorithmically flagged as unusable.
    - mu53 3y ago
      [dead]
    - sfn42 3y ago

pierat 3y ago

How bad of a driver were they, that they didn't use their eyes to see the condition of the road? Sure Google could also have done basic map due diligence. Sure, barriers could have been kept up. But this isn't much functionally different than a tree falling across the road, flooding, sinkholes, or other similar hazards. You gotta watch the damned road if you're driving, NOT YOUR PHONE.

robador 3y ago
It was raining, night, and seemingly no street lights.
- sfn42 3y ago
  Then slow down. If you can't even see the road ahead of you, stop. You can't drive if you can't see the road. If you choose to drive blind that's on you.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Sure but also no one does that so the advice is speaking to only deaf ears. When was the last time you were driving on an interstate highway at night that isn't lit and slowed to a crawl to make sure there wasn't an unprepared sinkhole beyond your headlight view? Or actually checked that the overpass wasn't collapsed? Because at 75mph you aren't gonna stop in time if you only slam on your breaks when you see it.
    - sfn42 3y ago
      I always drive at a speed where I can stop the car in the area of road that I can see. If I can only see 10 meters ahead I have to be able to stop in probably 5 meters of road, accounting for reaction time etc. So then I have to go very slowly. I have completely stopped the car because it started raining so heavily I couldn't see the road. I am aware that many people drive recklessly. That doesn't change the fact that when they do so, they are neglecting their responsibility to keep themselves and others safe. When their recklessness has consequences, they have to face those consequences. Maybe if they survive and are rational people they will look inwards and understand that they could have avoided it had they taken their responsibility more seriously. This isn't a "no one does that" arm wavy topic. This is literally, in every sense of the word life and death. When you drive recklessly you endanger the health and lives of yourself and everyone around you. This is an extremely serious responsibility, traffic is responsible for the vast majority of deaths in modern society. Almost all of those deaths are caused by recklessness and neglect. I have known many people who have died in traffic. Some due to their own recklessness, others due to others' recklessness. I also know a man who has to live the rest of his life with the burden of having killed a 15 year old girl on her birthday, because him and his buddy wanted to race on public roads. I have absolutely no patience or sympathy for reckless drivers. Recklessness is a spectrum, obviously driving drunk or racing is more reckless than driving a too fast for the conditions but within the speed limit. But both are reckless. Both cost lives every day.

Panzer04 3y ago

It seems like the bigger issue here is a complete lack of signs leading up to the bridge - If it's a contiguous road I can see how someone might be lulled into a false sense of security. Ultimately, the final responsibility is the driver's, but there's very severe neglect on the part of the local government to allow the bridge to be unmarked and unsigned.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dannyphantom 3y ago

The boring context is that, in situations like this, the plaintiffs will indicate a large(ish) batch of defendants that will gradually slim down as the case moves forward in the court - the plaintiff attorney has a duty to cover all possibilities. Some of the other comments here already touch on who may be the more liable party other than Google. The public works department seemed to have played a game of passing around the 'accountability ball' which contributed to a tragic event. These cases generally take a pretttty long time to come to actually come to a close and it's an absolutely surreal and bleak experience the entire time.

nutate 3y ago

I drove into a ditch in Costa Rica following google maps. It was the end of any fantasy of ine that they still wanted to organize the world's information. Luckily it only cost $500 or so for the privilege of finding that out for sure.

francisofascii 3y ago

Here is the location of the damaged bridge: https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B046'53.6%22N+81%C2%B016'58.6%22W/@35.7815556,-81.2829444,18z https://www.google.com/maps/place/35%C2%B046'53.6%22N+81%C2%... You can see it you move out to the main road which has an more recent 2023 street view image.

wackycat 3y ago

If this bridge had just recently collapsed, I think google would be less at fault but it collapsed in 2013. 10 years is an awful long time to continue directing motorists to a collapsed bridge. Additionally, you think even if google missed user reports that the anomalous data of motorists always ignoring that direction should have triggered some sort of review. It's also awful that in 10 years no lights or barricades were added simply due to a game of "not-my-problem" by developers and transit authorities.

macintosh-hd 3y ago

Excited for this to end up as the next McDonalds coffee story… Google was notified several times over NINE years that the bridge had collapsed and they did nothing.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

The risk of technology was predicted by Michael Scott: https://youtu.be/DOW_kPzY_JY?si=CLFdmmo1zqyZste- https://youtu.be/DOW_kPzY_JY?si=CLFdmmo1zqyZste-

commiepatrol 3y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY