> Actual Conditions; Assumption of Risk. When you use Google Maps/Google Earth's map data, traffic, directions, and other content, you may find that actual conditions differ from the map results and content, so exercise your independent judgment and use Google Maps/Google Earth at your own risk. You’re responsible at all times for your conduct and its consequences.
this seems very obvious to me? i imagine "state of north carolina sued for allowing a dangerous abandoned bridge to stay connected to the public system" wouldn't make a nice juicy headline (and i imagine the state of north carolina has less money to throw at random lawsuits)
It's up to the judicial process to decide if Google is liable or not. But in my opinion the county is most at fault here for not blocking off the road. It's an odd choice to go after Google since they have world class lawyers and the case would open a floodgate of lawsuits for Google.
But that assumes that Google would settle. Without that happening, you are looking at years before getting a result, thousands of dollars of attorney fees and a high likelihood that if they lost they would appeal.
This might be more of an emotional lawsuit than a logical one.
Which is a not unreasonable assumption. It doesn't take much before Google's cost outstrip the cost of settlement, and even if it were to prevail in court it probably wouldn't recover costs
> Without that happening, you are looking at years before getting a result, thousands of dollars of attorney fees and a high likelihood that if they lost they would appeal.
Yes, it will take time if the other side doesn't settle, that's rather the norm in lawsuits. But its reasonably likely there is a contingency fee arrangement in olace, meaning the lawyers get paid with and out of any settlement or judgement.
> This might be more of an emotional lawsuit than a logical one
That's always possible, but you haven't really done much to argue for it being likely.
>> But that assumes that Google would settle.
>Which is a not unreasonable assumption
Not sure about Google, but companies like Walmart never settle. For them it's better to have the lawyers tell you "Oh, you're going after Wally, well, that's going to be the next 10 years of your life wasted", then it is to worry about the per litigation costs.
> Not sure about Google, but companies like Walmart never settle.
This is simply false. While Walmart is aggressive, they do settle. What Walmart does which masks this is, where they have they have the leverage to do so, as they usually do with individual plaintiffs that actually are concerned about financial compensation, insist in strict confidentiality terms in settlements which makes them unlikely to be reported. But even that doesn't cover everything, and there are noteworthy publicly reported settlements.
When you file a lawsuit you generally name anyone you can possibly imagine being associated, and then let the courts dismiss people.
I've been named in a lawsuit before, where my contractor's employee was suing my contractor for non-payment on a job (not my job), but named me in the case anyway since my job was going on at the same time. I just went to court prepared to defend myself and the first thing the judge did was ask why I was named in the suit.
Then I was promptly dismissed from the suit but asked to stay as a witness.
Would we be discussing it here on HN if Google were not named in the suit? Would anyone other than the local newspaper have written about it? Probably not.
But there are currently over 1200 articles on this, including national and international coverage, and that publicity is probably very helpful for the lawsuit.
People who don't have/use Google Maps may die in a similar way, given the lack of physical infrastructure to block the route. What does increased notoriety about a mistargeted lawsuit against Google do to assist?
To be clear, I think Google is not without blame, but the primary apportionment belongs to local road/bridge management, because fixing Google Maps alone would in no way be sufficiently safe, but fixing the physical infrastructure of the route would.
Maybe they're hoping Google will settle out of court. If they settle, they avoid the risk of setting the legal precedent they don't want. That might be worth the money to them.
The family could also just be doing it on principle. If Google had made the updates, the man would probably be alive today because he wouldn't have known about this (non-)route, so they may feel like Google shares some blame. The lawsuit and/or bad PR could motivate Google to make some kind of change, like better training or better support in their problem reporting system for tracking and prioritizing corrections related to safety.
Not sure what legal precedent it could set. A driver is ultimately responsible for where he drives. “Someone told me to drive into that wall” isn’t going to stand in any court.
It may be worth it to the family to take the gamble that Google would rather settle than go through a discovery process that puts their auditing process (a trade secret) in the public record.
Google is just one of the parties they are suing, it looks like they are also suing the local government and the landowner (the bridge is on private property).
It's obvious but probably you can't escape responsibility by just writing it on the terms and conditions if you are responsible for something. What if they put "we are not responsible for anything, use your judgement" on every product and sell dangerous products? I mean, IMHO they should be able to do that if they warn you properly(not just in the legal text) but that's just my opinion.
Is Google Maps responsible? I don't know but I can imagine someone claiming it due to the way information is displayed on the UI. Google maps always shows the information from position of authority, they are always very sure about the information they have and you don't have a clue about how certain they are bout what they tell you. I had multiple situations where Google Maps will direct me very confidently to roads that don't exist and once I had to stop and investigate if the road that Google Maps insist on is viable and the other time I had to turn back as the road conditions deteriorated from SUV-needed to T-80 tank needed. Negligent local authorities combined with authoritative assistant who is wrong and can't tell its wrong can be dangerous.
Maybe a UI with more clear communications is needed?
I'm actually at odds at what's Google responsible for exactly. Google isn't paid by the county to provide this service nor Google Maps is a paid service.
Google offers the service as instructions for how to get somewhere. Google and these other tech companies hide behind excuses that claim these systems are so complex and scaled that they can't possibly be responsible for when they're wrong. But it is they, as in Google, that built, offer, market, and implicitly claim it all works, not the people. Then they cowardly bury in the terms and conditions that it can't be trusted.
I am all for tech companies being held liable for what they market. Especially here, because at the end of the day, Google doesn't even care about providing you directions They just want your data that they can resell. But that's not how they market Google Maps.
I also think the county should be responsible, but that is in addition.
It's different when you're a corporation that makes $300 million annually, plasters the service all over ads and commercials, and buries the "as-is" in however many pages of terms and conditions that constantly update, all the while making money off of the "customer".
I'm not sure. The analogy was downloading any old open source software with the as-is disclaimer vs Google saying their map system gives you live, up to date, directions and maps but then buries in terms and conditions a claim that they're not responsible.
If Google marketed Maps as "for information only", then that would be different.
I mean, it's point 3 in the terms of service. The bold text is Actual Conditions; Assumption of Risk.
I don't think we can call that "buried" unless we're operating under the legal theory that nobody is held accountable to terms and conditions at all anymore.
If I print a map and sell it showing a bridge. Then later the bridge washes out in a flood, how in any way would the map maker be responsible if you're aware enough not to drive off a cliff. This case has nothing to do with any technology involved.
Counties, in general under law, are excluded from most of these kinds of liabilities in most states. Probably why the family is going after Google, County is a dead end.
What if I told you about the bridge collapse and then you reprinted the maps, but left the collapsed bridge on there?
That is what the lawsuit is claiming. I still don't think Google is at any fault in this scenario, but it is a little surprising that the route still shows after several years of the bridge being out (and multiple reports to Google about it.)
When it's on paper, it's very clear that the information is not live updated. Also, that piece of paper wouldn't be giving instructions. The level of alertness and the expectations would be calibrated accordingly.
In the case of Google Maps, the thing claims live data and gives you authoritative instructions like "turn left".
People have tendency to follow instructions and trust the computer, so if the computer says something people try their best to do it. Combine that with the illusion of live data, there you have a disaster waiting to happen. After all, the device that knows how much traffic is there at this very moment at particular location must also know if there's a bridge or not, right?
There can be multiple parties responsible, the county looks like definitely responsible(or not, if it's not an infra where they are responsible to maintain?) but Google can be too.
Google Maps is not a free product at all, it's a commercial product provided for free as part of an ad business. It's free as the free soda with the hamburger.
More customer support is needed. Article says bridge collapsed 9 years ago and people used the suggest edit feature and Google ignored it. Even if Google is not fully responsible for a person driving off a cliff, they are definitely negligent.
That the terms say that? Who is disputing that? It's completely besides the point of whether or not that term carries legal wait. You can't have someone waive away your duty to not be grossly negligent.
Speaking of obvious:
"The Tuesday court filing includes email records from another Hickory resident who had used the map’s “suggest an edit” feature in September 2020 to alert the company that it was directing drivers over the collapsed bridge. A November 2020 email confirmation from Google confirms the company received her report and was reviewing the suggested change, but the lawsuit claims Google took no further actions."
They had been on notice for ~2 years that they were directing people towards a collapsed bridge. I find it concerning the way some people respond to this issue, and the general concept of negligence, as it speaks towards their views on how we should treat others.
It would be interesting if this was the case that blew up Google's model of forcing everything to be "decided" by a computer, refusing to allow humans to be involved.
The bridge in question is about a mile from my house. I'm pretty sure the road it's on is not publicly maintained, as it's just a street within a neighborhood. And that's a neighborhood that doesn't have a HOA, so I don't know if anyone is actually legally responsible for maintaining the road or bridge.
There is always someone responsible. If it's private land, there is an owner of the land. If it's public land, then at the very least the county or city is responsible.
I think what you're trying to say and left off is "outside of the person who had the event occur with them"
And in that case, no quite often state laws will absolve responsibility from any potential stakeholders. Agricultural liability laws in many midwestern states are an example of that.
Well, the land is owned by Strip of Land Holdings 123. But they have a contractual relationship with Bridges 876 Inc to maintain the bridge, and the owners of Bridges 876 Inc are to be found at a PO box in the Cayman Islands. Hang around outside the post office down there long enough and I'm sure you'll see the owners pop up.
No one would care about Bridges 876. They would sue Strip of Land Holdings 123 as the owner of the property, and SoLH123 would have to send someone to represent them in court. If they didn't, the would loose, and then loose their land in the judgement.
Eventually the person would be made whole somehow, and the responsible person would be found.
You are correct, but /u/cool_dude85 is making a movie reference to a chain of holding companies created to obfuscate ownership to avoid just this situation.
Ethically? There are many people in that town partially responsible. There is no way I would live in a town for a year, where I knew a situation like that was in place, without stacking old cinderblocks or dragging a fallen tree across the road, on both sides. Sheesh. "Not my job" gone wild.
So is it obvious that the bridge is out? Did the incident occur at night, and was visibility poor? As much as I hate Google, I find it hard to believe they should be held accountable before whoever owns the road with a bridge to nowhere that isn't marked or blocked off.
The article states that the accident occurred at 11pm, and there were no barriers to the bridge. A concrete barrier was put up by local residents after the accident.
It sounds like nobody wanted to put up any warnings, because they might then assume some responsibility for the bridge itself. Tragic.
The road is pretty steep on either side of the bridge and it's a small one lane (IIRC) bridge. At night I definitely think it could be difficult to see that the bridge was out until it was too late.
Edit: According to articles linked elsewhere in the comments the bridge was privately owned and the owners are being sued along with Google.
As far as ownership, I am no expert but I think the land under the road would be government owned (not sure if state, county, or city) because there's a public right-of-way to ensure houses in the subdivision have access to public roads. However in the absence of a HOA the property owners within the subdivision are collectively responsible for road maintenance. It's part of the paperwork when you buy a house. But I don't know if they're required to maintain it to a specific standard... And in this particular case the neighborhood in question is pretty middle class (middle class in a LCOL area). I'm guessing a bridge repair isn't cheap, so it's very plausible that the neighborhood literally couldn't afford it. This definitely seems like a thorny topic, not something where it's easy to lay the blame at the feet one individual or entity.
I have been directed by google down roads marked "private".
I have been directed by google down roads that weren't actually roads.
When I was in Arches National Park, I noticed google trying to direct me to take an actual jeep trail instead of a paved road. Like, big sign at the turn out that said "high clearance, 4wd required. Do not attempt when wet" (the jeep trail actually crossed a river, which at that time was about 3 feet deep). And when i deliberately modified my path on my phone to not go down the jeep trail, within 2 miles of driving, google maps helpfully interrupted its own directions to say "we've found a route that will save you 30 minutes. If you don't want to take the new route, press ignore", which directed me back to the fucking jeep trail.
I feel like Google does have some culpability here, since they make it so hard to actually avoid hazards while still using their tool. Like, how is there not an option to just avoid dirt roads the way I can avoid toll roads? I don't dispute that it is ultimately the driver's responsibility to validate the program's outputs. But if the only way to use the app at all is to not validate the outputs, then I don't think a single line clause in the EULA is sufficient to shield google from liability.
A few years back there was a story where Google Maps would frequently guide people through a steep narrow street which really wasn't intended for this kind of traffic, creating a dangerous situation for both drivers and residents because this road really wasn't designed or intended for heavy thoroughfare.
Residents complained to Google. Google them to go pound sand and that there isn't anything they can do.
Quite frankly I'm having a hard time explaining the difference between "knowingly putting people in a dangerous situation" and "accidentally putting people in a dangerous situation and then refusing to fix it". I guess it's easy to enough to ignore these kind of externalities if they're not happening at your front door every day... I can forgive the routing mistake, which is an understandable one to make. What I can't forgive is the "well, not our problem". If you're going to make a GPS guidance app then you also need to take responsibility for what it tells people. Mistakes are okay. Pretending mistakes have nothing to do with you is not.
All of that said, I find it hard to really judge this situation based on the provided information; the key question is "could Google reasonably have done better?" However, in the past Google Maps has definitely demonstrated that it doesn't take these concerns very serious and it's 100% worth a serious investigation in both this specific siltation but also whether Google Maps in general takes enough reasonable precautions to prevent this kind of thing.
As I've understood it, one reason they will refuse to do anything about those cases is because they can't really differentiate between "this is dangerous" and NIMBYs who don't want traffic down their quiet suburban street.
But also, if people are actively complaining about it, maybe that's a good indicator the street shouldn't be used as a thoroughfare in directions. Being a little bit faster isn't a good justification, and back road shortcuts aren't something that should be widely advertised to tourists and visitors.
I don't doubt there are some people complaining about the smallest of things, but "I don't want my quiet suburban street swamped with traffic" is not "NIMBY", and can certainly be very reasonable. Actually, they closed off one end of a street where I lived many years ago for pretty much this reason: people kept using it as a "shortcut". If you drive it's not very obvious, but with GPS it is.
Regardless, "we don't do it because it's hard" is just a different way of phrasing "we can't be arsed and don't care".
If the article is correct google have had for years warnings that this bridge has collapsed. Now - of course the ultimate responsibility is to the driver because - you have eyes. Then it is to the myriad of people who have not put a traffic cone there. And lastly is to google for not updating their database.
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
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.
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.
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.)
Sure, Google could have fixed it when they were notified. I do not know why they didn't. I assume there's a fairly decent reason, given the fact that Google has a vested interest in the accuracy of their maps app.
It is, however, irrelevant because similar things happen all the time and they can't prevent all of them.
You people don't really think about what you're asking for. These types of public reporting systems get abused all the time, not to mention user error. It takes an immense amount of work to go through reports and handle them. You can't just trust reports, so you either have to send someone out there to check it out for themselves or somehow verify the legitimacy of the reporter.
If they just accepted reports like this automatically you'd have 4chan drawing dicks by removing roads in Manhattan overnight.
So you want Google to go through all this trouble, just so a couple irresponsible drivers can't blame their map app when they kill themselves or others. Which they will do regardless of how accurate their maps and routes are.
Also, there is no "assumption about how irresponsible he was". If he drove responsibly, he wouldn't have gone off a bridge. It is that simple. The car only goes forward if you press the gas. He drove his car off a collapsed bridge. If you drive at a reasonable speed and pay attention to the road in front of you, that literally can not happen. Either he went too fast for the conditions or he wasn't paying attention. Or he had a stroke or the car malfunctioned I guess, in any case it has nothing to do with Google and everything to do with him.
And don't talk to me about "victim blaming". What an absolute bullshit term. If there was a person in the road rather than a collapsed bridge, would this guy still be the victim? No he wouldn't, he would be a murderer because if he can't see a whole ass collapsed bridge he certainly can't see a person wearing dark clothes. The only thing he's a victim of is his own recklessness. And maybe society's general nonchalance with regards to traffic safety.
What kind of dream world are you living in? It's not a defense, it's a cost/benefit analysis. A map app that gives great routes for 99% of use cases is good enough, there's no point spending billions making it 0.1% better.
Google is not a charity. Google Maps earns them some amount of money, it is not sustainable to spend significantly more than that amount of money on it. They are a for-profit company, if a product is losing significant amounts of money they will kill it.
I'm not saying "this is what Google should decide for themselves". They should, of course, but they're amoral greedy bastards, so I know that ship has sailed.
I'm saying "this is what we as a society should mandate for Google".
Yeah, and I'm saying that's a shit idea because it won't fix any problems, it won't make Google Maps noticeably better and it'll probably just make Google drop the product altogether if it's too demanding to the point where Google stops making money from it.
Idiots who don't watch the road while driving will still be killing themselves and others.
> It's literally impossible to make one that is 100% reliable
That's not the standard. The standard is negligence. A waiver will protect your whitewater rafting company if someone injures themselves as part of a well-run tour. There is always a chance of mishap, the people who take these trips know it, and the waiver reminds them. It will not protect your company if the mishap occurred because you don't have enough life jackets for all the passengers or if you don't check your rafts for leaks before the trip.
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.)
> 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.
Yes, everyday people should use their noggins, but there are things that go beyond what those everyday people would expect and anyone who does those things can still be liable. Courts have upheld this "reasonable expectation" standard again and again and again, literally every day, and it's not hard to see why. If "use your noggin" was a foolproof defense, explicitly in the TOS or otherwise, companies literally couldn't be held liable for anything. That's clearly insane, so the line has to be drawn somewhere else and it has been drawn at reasonable expectation.
That’s a presumptuous statement. The crash occurred at night in very poor weather. It was likely impossible to see the missing half of the bridge under those conditions. Everyone already uses common sense. That’s why it’s called common sense. Negligence is something else, and we can’t blame the victim without hearing all the facts here.
I stand by what I wrote. If you are overdriving your headlights, you are driving negligently. You're the driver, you are responsible for looking where you're going.
I agree overdriving your headlights is reckless, however remaining stationary isn’t enough to distinguish one black void from another. This is a function of the limits on vision not speed.
Which is why the municipality should be liable for not properly closing off the road well before the bridge crossing, and putting a big, red and white reflective striped fence several feet before the edge visible from a distance after the road closing as a second barrier/sighted warning.
In theory absolutely, but that doesn’t mean you can actually sue.
“In United States law, state, federal and tribal governments generally enjoy immunity from lawsuits.[48] Local governments typically enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity
Unless you stop, get out, and poke the road with a stick, you frequently can’t tell if the road is there. Or at least frequently compared to how far people drive.
It’s ignorable because the road is so infrequently missing not because you can always see it.
People see the edge of the road just fine, we even make a point of adding reflective paint to important bits of it. It’s the occasional black voids in the center which everyone just ignores as irrelevant.
Headlights being mounted so low results in long shadows from minor imperfections in the road surface which could hide huge holes. I can only assume you’ve become so used to this it doesn’t even occur to you that it’s an actual risk, thus proving my point.
PS: Hood geometry also plays a role here. There’s no point in casting light down at an angle that the driver would be unable to see it but that’s getting into the weeds.
Terms&conditions are not law, and deciding whether 'terms clearly say X' actually implies 'X' (or if those are just empty words, as many clauses are) does take some legal knowledge.
Yeah no - if multiple people reported this issue to Google Maps and no action was taken, then personally I consider Google eminently sue-able. I would say that most personal injury lawsuits would take this into account.
> Actual Conditions; Assumption of Risk. When you use Google Maps/Google Earth's map data, traffic, directions, and other content, you may find that actual conditions differ from the map results and content, so exercise your independent judgment and use Google Maps/Google Earth at your own risk. You’re responsible at all times for your conduct and its consequences.
this seems very obvious to me? i imagine "state of north carolina sued for allowing a dangerous abandoned bridge to stay connected to the public system" wouldn't make a nice juicy headline (and i imagine the state of north carolina has less money to throw at random lawsuits)