147
Family sues Google after Maps allegedly directed father off collapsed bridge
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
147 points (92.5% liked)
World News
32048 readers
1160 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Of course they had a part in the death. They routed him over a broken bridge. That's their part of it. And not fixing the map after being told about the issue. Thinking they didn't have any part in this seems bizarre.
There's two problems here.
Firstly the map is out of date.
Secondly the road wasn't blocked off.
The map been out of date is not criminal there's no legal requirement that maps are accurate. However there is a legal requirement that a road is blocked off.
It's the state that's ultimately responsible not some GPS company. The above response right, how does it make any difference how long the bridge has been out for? Google aren't actually responsible for updating a section of their map, Yes it would be great if they would do it, but they're not actually legally required to do it.
"It's not criminal so they didn't have any part or responsibility" is something I don't understand. Of course the routing was part of the reason this happened. Municipality's/landowner's part is how they hadn't closed to road, put up signage etc. Google's part is the bad routing. Driver's part is well, the ultimately the driving. Thinking the routing had no part in the death just doesn't make sense to me.
Ample time and opportunity to fix it, even being told about the issue. Of course the time makes a difference, if the bridge had collapsed 15 minutes prior then it would be less bad on Google's side for not having made the change.
Of course there's responsibility for the bad routing, even if they're not legally required to update the map/routing. I doubt the case against Google goes anywhere but to me it seems obvious they share a part of the responsibility for their routing.