4 ms·

How has that road not been closed off?? That's the bigger news here.

RandallBrown 3y ago
It was in the Bing street view. I wonder how the signs got removed. https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=c3224526-5ada-4a41-b8f7-e854f676b4ec&cp=35.781173~-81.283444&lvl=12.68&dir=49.5&pi=6.6&style=x&imgid=b9a61493-da8c-4931-a23c-c1233c7ce475&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027 https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=c3224526-5ada-4a41-b8f7-e854f...
- crazygringo 3y ago
  "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." https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article279563759.html https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/... I can't find any reference to who removed the barricades, but that seems like the main criminally negligent action to me here. That's obviously going to get someone killed -- and it did.
  - chrisfosterelli 3y ago
    Yeah this clearly seems like the fault of whoever is supposed to manage that road. Google maps also shows physical barriers there in May 2023, but different ones. Hard to say what it looked like at the time of the accident but if the road just disappeared I could absolutely see how that accident would happen with or without navigation. https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7811991,-81.2834442,3a,16.5y,47.46h,83.17t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1svpQR1WFuQox7Ms6COmxnbw!2e0!5s20230501T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7811991,-81.2834442,3a,16.5y...
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      Oh, this is crazy. So Google still provides directions across that bridge, and has data collection from May showing (qualitatively) the bridge is out. But when you go to StreetView, you can't hand-navigate across the bridge in the 2023 data, but if you snap back to the 2012 data, you can... And Google will let you navigate back and forth, then snap back to 2023. Looks like the revision in 2023 didn't remove the road from the 2012 dataset, and Google's map resolution algorithm is chaining back to an older revision to find the connectivity that justifies the path. What a mess.
      - chrisfosterelli 3y ago
        You can't go over the bridge in street view in 2023 because the street view car didn't drive over it (in this case because it can't). Clicking the map in street view chains to the nearest street view image. They don't definitively use street view data to determine their route network for navigation; there's lots of roads that the street view car doesn't drive which are valid roads. For example forest resource roads are like that here in BC, they are allowed to be driven (when the roads are open) and will be navigated through by Google maps (regardless of if it's actually passable) but street view cars never go down them. Correspondingly, you can use street view to move across roads that are not navigable at all -- for example backwards up one way streets or across intersections that are impassable by cars. The street view map isn't a good proxy for routability.
        shadowgovt 3y ago
        It's not, but in this case I suspect it's giving us a clue as to how the algorithm broke. Here's my imagined failure mode: 1. Google collected new data in 2023 2. That data didn't include a turn down the busted road (because why would they bother, they can see the bridge is out from up the hill) 3. Since there was no turn down the busted road, there was no new data collected for the busted road 4. They ran a fusion step to build a connectivity graph from snapshots of traversible world. Here in particular, that would have been necessary because there isn't much visibility on the road from the sky either, due to the tree line. 5. Their algorithm considered street-view-collected data to be highest-quality. Especially new street-view-collected data. 6. The connectivity graph went "Hm, I'm missing new data for this road segment... Oh, but I have some from 2012. I'll just assume we missed collection here and fuse the old data in to build a coherent map." 7. This fusion step killed all the "Hey this road doesn't exist" edits because it kicked out a new, "pristine" map from real-world measurements. In essence, the fusion step improperly updates the system's belief on recency of data so that the 2012 data is treated as fresh as the 2023 data and overrides older (2022 etc.) reports the bridge is out. Steps 6 and 7 here are bugs, but it's a subtle enough bug that I can imagine the Maps team failing to catch it until disaster hits.
- dublinben 3y ago
  That's clearly an insufficient level of "closure" for a hazard like this. Those signs look like they could easily be removed by one or two people without any kind of specialized tools. An adequate barrier would be more like a few concrete blocks physically preventing anyone from driving past.
  - chrisfosterelli 3y ago
    It looks like that's what they have there as of this year.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    That's extremely common for roads in the "country" because there's not much available for the cost of installing jersey barriers across the road, etc. But when the bridge is out such that you'd die, it probably calls for a more permanent blockages or at least sending out the bulldozer to put up some earthworks.
jollyllama 3y ago
Why isn't the bridge fixed?
- astrange 3y ago
  Article says it was a privately maintained bridge and none of the relevant property owners fixed it.

It was in the Bing street view. I wonder how the signs got removed. https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=c3224526-5ada-4a41-b8f7-e854f676b4ec&cp=35.781173~-81.283444&lvl=12.68&dir=49.5&pi=6.6&style=x&imgid=b9a61493-da8c-4931-a23c-c1233c7ce475&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027 https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=c3224526-5ada-4a41-b8f7-e854f...

crazygringo 3y ago
"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." https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article279563759.html https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/... I can't find any reference to who removed the barricades, but that seems like the main criminally negligent action to me here. That's obviously going to get someone killed -- and it did.
- chrisfosterelli 3y ago
  Yeah this clearly seems like the fault of whoever is supposed to manage that road. Google maps also shows physical barriers there in May 2023, but different ones. Hard to say what it looked like at the time of the accident but if the road just disappeared I could absolutely see how that accident would happen with or without navigation. https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7811991,-81.2834442,3a,16.5y,47.46h,83.17t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1svpQR1WFuQox7Ms6COmxnbw!2e0!5s20230501T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7811991,-81.2834442,3a,16.5y...
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Oh, this is crazy. So Google still provides directions across that bridge, and has data collection from May showing (qualitatively) the bridge is out. But when you go to StreetView, you can't hand-navigate across the bridge in the 2023 data, but if you snap back to the 2012 data, you can... And Google will let you navigate back and forth, then snap back to 2023. Looks like the revision in 2023 didn't remove the road from the 2012 dataset, and Google's map resolution algorithm is chaining back to an older revision to find the connectivity that justifies the path. What a mess.
    - chrisfosterelli 3y ago
      You can't go over the bridge in street view in 2023 because the street view car didn't drive over it (in this case because it can't). Clicking the map in street view chains to the nearest street view image. They don't definitively use street view data to determine their route network for navigation; there's lots of roads that the street view car doesn't drive which are valid roads. For example forest resource roads are like that here in BC, they are allowed to be driven (when the roads are open) and will be navigated through by Google maps (regardless of if it's actually passable) but street view cars never go down them. Correspondingly, you can use street view to move across roads that are not navigable at all -- for example backwards up one way streets or across intersections that are impassable by cars. The street view map isn't a good proxy for routability.
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        It's not, but in this case I suspect it's giving us a clue as to how the algorithm broke. Here's my imagined failure mode: 1. Google collected new data in 2023 2. That data didn't include a turn down the busted road (because why would they bother, they can see the bridge is out from up the hill) 3. Since there was no turn down the busted road, there was no new data collected for the busted road 4. They ran a fusion step to build a connectivity graph from snapshots of traversible world. Here in particular, that would have been necessary because there isn't much visibility on the road from the sky either, due to the tree line. 5. Their algorithm considered street-view-collected data to be highest-quality. Especially new street-view-collected data. 6. The connectivity graph went "Hm, I'm missing new data for this road segment... Oh, but I have some from 2012. I'll just assume we missed collection here and fuse the old data in to build a coherent map." 7. This fusion step killed all the "Hey this road doesn't exist" edits because it kicked out a new, "pristine" map from real-world measurements. In essence, the fusion step improperly updates the system's belief on recency of data so that the 2012 data is treated as fresh as the 2023 data and overrides older (2022 etc.) reports the bridge is out. Steps 6 and 7 here are bugs, but it's a subtle enough bug that I can imagine the Maps team failing to catch it until disaster hits.
dublinben 3y ago
That's clearly an insufficient level of "closure" for a hazard like this. Those signs look like they could easily be removed by one or two people without any kind of specialized tools. An adequate barrier would be more like a few concrete blocks physically preventing anyone from driving past.
- chrisfosterelli 3y ago
  It looks like that's what they have there as of this year.
- bombcar 3y ago
  That's extremely common for roads in the "country" because there's not much available for the cost of installing jersey barriers across the road, etc. But when the bridge is out such that you'd die, it probably calls for a more permanent blockages or at least sending out the bulldozer to put up some earthworks.

jollyllama 3y ago

Why isn't the bridge fixed?

astrange 3y ago
Article says it was a privately maintained bridge and none of the relevant property owners fixed it.