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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
by 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 agoNa, the family just wants money. It's not some kind of 4D chess move.
- baobabKoodaa 3y agoAh yes, because when your loved one dies, that's what you immediately think of: how can I make money off this?
- alternatex 3y agoIf a loved one dies I will also not think to blame Google Maps for the negligence of local government.
- sfn42 3y agoI 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 agoAt 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 agoAnd 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 agoAt best it would have to be flagged for review, at which point someone would have to check it somehow. Otherwise you'd end up deleting a bunch of totally fine roads that simply aren't frequently used by people who send their locations to Google.
- 3seashells 3y ago9 years not used once is not infrequently
- sfn42 3y agoYou seem confused. A road can be used by people who aren't sending their location to Google. I would also be surprised if every single road in the world has seen usage in the past decade. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of roads that just aren't ever used any more. Doesn't mean they won't be useful in the future. Doesn't mean they should be removed from maps. Implementing your suggested algorithm would probably make the map less accurate, not more accurate.