5 ms·

Waivers don't protect against negligence.

dathinab 3y ago
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
- danaris 3y ago
  I think that it's very reasonable to argue that explicitly telling someone to take steps that will kill them is, at best, grossly negligent. The fact that it required other, completely unrelated, lines of defense to fail for the victim to be able to follow those steps all the way does not in any way absolve Google of responsibility here.
  - dathinab 3y ago
    but in any sane road network this steps will _not_ kill anyone because any sane road network doesn't contain death traps it's not the responsibility of any 3rd party map service to close up death traps in a road network it's the responsibility of whoever maintains that network additionally I would say it's the responsibility of the same institute to publish information about road network changes like closures for maintenance or due to damages, I mean if even the people which sole job it is to maintain the road network don't know if a street is closed off or not (ignoring spontaneous changes) how is some 3rd party then supposed to know (some exceptions to off road roads which frequently might be closed of by weather and in general often can't be taken with normal cars and always have warning signs etc.) I mean would you have said the same if the bridge just broke a week ago? Or if it would have been a different card service like OpenStreetMaps? Or if they had used a card service where you need to buy map updates and they handn't done so yet? The safety of traffic participant _must never ever_ depend on the navy system they are using. But this also means that you hardly ever can fault a map service for stuff like that. ( I mean if it tries to rout your multi day road trip through a desert that's a different matter.)
    - danaris 3y ago
      > but in any sane road network this steps will _not_ kill anyone ...Which is why we don't say the victim was negligent. Unlike if, say, they'd just decided it would be a good idea to drive into a flooded street. > it's not the responsibility of any 3rd party map service to close up death traps in a road network It is the responsibility of any 3rd party map service to accept corrections to their maps submitted by users through their official process within a reasonable time frame. Unlike in this case, where Google had been told over the course of two years that this bridge was out, and they shouldn't route people over it. > I mean would you have said the same if the bridge just broke a week ago? No, I wouldn't, especially if no one had reported it to Google within that time. It would have been a tragedy, but not an easily-avoidable one like what actually happened. > The safety of traffic participant _must never ever_ depend on the navy system they are using. > I mean if it tries to rout your multi day road trip through a desert that's a different matter. ...So apparently you do think that the navigation system can sometimes be at fault for giving dangerous directions. You draw the line in a different place than where I do, which is fine—but you also appear to think that this means there is no line, which is a problem for being able to rationally discuss important topics like this.
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Okay let's forbid map apps altogether then. Apple, google, open, whatever. It's literally impossible to make one that is 100% reliable, and according to a bunch of geniuses on HN the app owner is responsible for morons who don't watch the road while driving, so the only logical conclusion is that we can't have nice things because some people are idiots. Either you accept that it can't be perfect and people have to practice common sense, or you abandon the concept altogether. It would be beyond absurd to hold Google responsible for this accident. The driver of the car is responsible for driving safely. He failed to uphold his responsibility and died. This is why you have to drive more carefully. Nearly everyone is reckless in traffic. Huge amounts of people text while driving, tailgate, speed, etc. People get defensive about this kind of stuff, I think, because they know they could have made the same mistake. So admitting that this guy was an idiot is admitting that they are idiots and they don't like that. Fact is, if you think this could possibly happen to an actually responsible driver, you don't understand what it means to be a responsible driver and you probably are not one. You're just a danger to yourself and others, like most drivers. A responsible driver would never keep going in a situation where their visibility was so bad thay they couldn't see a collapsed bridge. A responsible driver slows down, or even stops if necessary, when they can't see what's going on - because if you can't see what's ahead of you you can't keep driving. It's that simple, there are absolutely no exceptions. I don't give a shit how dark it was or how much it was raining or whatever else. If you can't see you stop the car. If you can see 5 meters ahead you go slow enough that you can stop in 2 meters. Yes, that's slow. Yes it's necessary. We're currently discussing a great example of why it is absolutely necessary. Alternatively he could see just fine, he just wasn't looking. Which again, if you have to take your attention off the road you stop the car first. You can't keep driving while writing/reading/checking map etc. That is how you end up dead and famous for trying to drive over a collapsed bridge.
    - danaris 3y ago
      Or...we could cut out the victim blaming and reams of assumptions about just how awful and irresponsible the poor guy who dies was, and do what's actually being suggested, and require purveyors of these map apps to review and appropriately handle reports send to them of problems in a reasonable amount of time. That's it. That's all that's being asked here. Google was informed, from what I understand, multiple times over the course of two years that this route was no longer valid, and did nothing. Either they chose to ignore those reports, or the departments that should handle them are understaffed and they need to be mandated to hire more people there. (Just another instance where "we can't possibly employ enough people to make this healthy and still make a profit!" is not a response that we should be willing to accept.)

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

danaris 3y ago
I think that it's very reasonable to argue that explicitly telling someone to take steps that will kill them is, at best, grossly negligent. The fact that it required other, completely unrelated, lines of defense to fail for the victim to be able to follow those steps all the way does not in any way absolve Google of responsibility here.
- dathinab 3y ago
  but in any sane road network this steps will _not_ kill anyone because any sane road network doesn't contain death traps it's not the responsibility of any 3rd party map service to close up death traps in a road network it's the responsibility of whoever maintains that network additionally I would say it's the responsibility of the same institute to publish information about road network changes like closures for maintenance or due to damages, I mean if even the people which sole job it is to maintain the road network don't know if a street is closed off or not (ignoring spontaneous changes) how is some 3rd party then supposed to know (some exceptions to off road roads which frequently might be closed of by weather and in general often can't be taken with normal cars and always have warning signs etc.) I mean would you have said the same if the bridge just broke a week ago? Or if it would have been a different card service like OpenStreetMaps? Or if they had used a card service where you need to buy map updates and they handn't done so yet? The safety of traffic participant _must never ever_ depend on the navy system they are using. But this also means that you hardly ever can fault a map service for stuff like that. ( I mean if it tries to rout your multi day road trip through a desert that's a different matter.)
  - danaris 3y ago
    > but in any sane road network this steps will _not_ kill anyone ...Which is why we don't say the victim was negligent. Unlike if, say, they'd just decided it would be a good idea to drive into a flooded street. > it's not the responsibility of any 3rd party map service to close up death traps in a road network It is the responsibility of any 3rd party map service to accept corrections to their maps submitted by users through their official process within a reasonable time frame. Unlike in this case, where Google had been told over the course of two years that this bridge was out, and they shouldn't route people over it. > I mean would you have said the same if the bridge just broke a week ago? No, I wouldn't, especially if no one had reported it to Google within that time. It would have been a tragedy, but not an easily-avoidable one like what actually happened. > The safety of traffic participant _must never ever_ depend on the navy system they are using. > I mean if it tries to rout your multi day road trip through a desert that's a different matter. ...So apparently you do think that the navigation system can sometimes be at fault for giving dangerous directions. You draw the line in a different place than where I do, which is fine—but you also appear to think that this means there is no line, which is a problem for being able to rationally discuss important topics like this.
- sfn42 3y ago
  Okay let's forbid map apps altogether then. Apple, google, open, whatever. It's literally impossible to make one that is 100% reliable, and according to a bunch of geniuses on HN the app owner is responsible for morons who don't watch the road while driving, so the only logical conclusion is that we can't have nice things because some people are idiots. Either you accept that it can't be perfect and people have to practice common sense, or you abandon the concept altogether. It would be beyond absurd to hold Google responsible for this accident. The driver of the car is responsible for driving safely. He failed to uphold his responsibility and died. This is why you have to drive more carefully. Nearly everyone is reckless in traffic. Huge amounts of people text while driving, tailgate, speed, etc. People get defensive about this kind of stuff, I think, because they know they could have made the same mistake. So admitting that this guy was an idiot is admitting that they are idiots and they don't like that. Fact is, if you think this could possibly happen to an actually responsible driver, you don't understand what it means to be a responsible driver and you probably are not one. You're just a danger to yourself and others, like most drivers. A responsible driver would never keep going in a situation where their visibility was so bad thay they couldn't see a collapsed bridge. A responsible driver slows down, or even stops if necessary, when they can't see what's going on - because if you can't see what's ahead of you you can't keep driving. It's that simple, there are absolutely no exceptions. I don't give a shit how dark it was or how much it was raining or whatever else. If you can't see you stop the car. If you can see 5 meters ahead you go slow enough that you can stop in 2 meters. Yes, that's slow. Yes it's necessary. We're currently discussing a great example of why it is absolutely necessary. Alternatively he could see just fine, he just wasn't looking. Which again, if you have to take your attention off the road you stop the car first. You can't keep driving while writing/reading/checking map etc. That is how you end up dead and famous for trying to drive over a collapsed bridge.
  - danaris 3y ago
    Or...we could cut out the victim blaming and reams of assumptions about just how awful and irresponsible the poor guy who dies was, and do what's actually being suggested, and require purveyors of these map apps to review and appropriately handle reports send to them of problems in a reasonable amount of time. That's it. That's all that's being asked here. Google was informed, from what I understand, multiple times over the course of two years that this route was no longer valid, and did nothing. Either they chose to ignore those reports, or the departments that should handle them are understaffed and they need to be mandated to hire more people there. (Just another instance where "we can't possibly employ enough people to make this healthy and still make a profit!" is not a response that we should be willing to accept.)