4 ms·

Compare the satellite imagery from 2023, which clearly shows the bridge is out: https://i.imgur.com/WXIxLtp.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WXIxLtp.jpg with the Stree

Compare the satellite imagery from 2023, which clearly shows the bridge is out: https://i.imgur.com/WXIxLtp.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WXIxLtp.jpg with the Street View record from 2012: https://i.imgur.com/cen89bg.jpg 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/D9dRF1B.png https://i.imgur.com/4NcTIxZ.png https://i.imgur.com/4NcTIxZ.png Maps link: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7815814,-81.2828119,82m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7815814,-81.2828119,82m/data...

happytoexplain 3y ago
I'm having trouble interpreting this: "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.
shaneoh 3y ago
Could have easily been at night and/or during a heavy storm with very low visibility
- levinb 3y ago
  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.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  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.
  - happytoexplain 3y ago
    >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 All of those examples are more visible in low-vis conditions than a missing bridge, due to the presence of physical objects - e.g. cliffs and unexpected turns always have barriers/signage. A missing bridge is the absence of an object. I think this is a really particularly easy case in which to give the driver the benefit of the doubt.
freejazz 3y ago
Well, people don't drive "from the air". They drive "from the ground".
Borgz 3y ago
I believe the driver was driving a car, not an airplane, so I'm not sure how the bridge being visibly damaged "from the air" is relevant.
recursive 3y ago
> Compare the satellite imagery from 2023, which clearly shows the bridge is out: Maybe it shows it, but I could definitely not call that "clearly", although that doesn't really matter anyway, as abundantly mentioned elsewhere.
cbm-vic-20 3y ago
OpenStreetMap also shows it as disconnected, as part of a change made after this happened. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/35.78116/-81.28272 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/35.78116/-81.28272 https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/126938081 https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/126938081 The nodes on either side claim that there are barriers here. https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10072951700 https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10072951700 https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10072951701 https://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"
jeffbee 3y ago
This wapo article has much better photos of the site, if you have access to it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/21/north-carolina-hickory-bridge-collapse-google-lawsuit/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/21/north-carol... I think these deep image links work even if you aren't a subscriber. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/UJSS2JDHQPMEZQLRL4AHIRZSNM.jpg&w=1200 https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...
fdsalkjvlkj 3y ago
> 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.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  > 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/article279563759.html https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/20/google-maps-lawsuit-man-drives-off-fallen-bridge-following-directions/70915836007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/20/google...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
karussell 3y ago
It is a one-way bridge! Try swapping start+end and it will happily route over the bridge.

happytoexplain 3y ago

I'm having trouble interpreting this: "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.

shaneoh 3y ago

Could have easily been at night and/or during a heavy storm with very low visibility

levinb 3y ago
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.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
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.
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  >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 All of those examples are more visible in low-vis conditions than a missing bridge, due to the presence of physical objects - e.g. cliffs and unexpected turns always have barriers/signage. A missing bridge is the absence of an object. I think this is a really particularly easy case in which to give the driver the benefit of the doubt.

freejazz 3y ago

Well, people don't drive "from the air". They drive "from the ground".

Borgz 3y ago

I believe the driver was driving a car, not an airplane, so I'm not sure how the bridge being visibly damaged "from the air" is relevant.

recursive 3y ago

> Compare the satellite imagery from 2023, which clearly shows the bridge is out: Maybe it shows it, but I could definitely not call that "clearly", although that doesn't really matter anyway, as abundantly mentioned elsewhere.

cbm-vic-20 3y ago

OpenStreetMap also shows it as disconnected, as part of a change made after this happened. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/35.78116/-81.28272 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/35.78116/-81.28272 https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/126938081 https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/126938081 The nodes on either side claim that there are barriers here. https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10072951700 https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10072951700 https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/10072951701 https://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"

jeffbee 3y ago

This wapo article has much better photos of the site, if you have access to it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/21/north-carolina-hickory-bridge-collapse-google-lawsuit/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/21/north-carol... I think these deep image links work even if you aren't a subscriber. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/UJSS2JDHQPMEZQLRL4AHIRZSNM.jpg&w=1200 https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...

fdsalkjvlkj 3y ago

> 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.

crazygringo 3y ago
> 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/article279563759.html https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/20/google-maps-lawsuit-man-drives-off-fallen-bridge-following-directions/70915836007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/20/google...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

karussell 3y ago

It is a one-way bridge! Try swapping start+end and it will happily route over the bridge.