Sometimes driving on gravel or a less than stellar road is a simple concession to live this lifestyle. I have lived in an HOA and I will expend whatever resources are necessary to never live in one again. It is the worst form of local governance.
I suppose, but when that broken down road becomes a safety hazard, then what? That appears to be what caused the incident in the article.
FWIW, I tend to agree that HOAs are less than ideal (and downright evil in some cases). But, I don't have a better solution the problem of shared common areas and infrastructure. I'd much prefer the county/state took over all roads, but in my neighborhood, we still have to deal with trash collection and common area maintenance (parking spaces, neighborhood entrance, signage, lighting on sidewalks, etc).
Do roads not break down and persist in an unsafe condition when under government stewardship? I agree this is a hard problem, but the solution is probably something like "mandatory inspections of private roads on a cadence by the nearest local government and shared liability for roads not marked as out of service." The government may not be responsible for maintaining the road, but it is reasonable to require they maintain road condition records for their jurisdiction, reporting obligations (including to mapping providers), and mapping providers (Google) should share in liability if they are not updating their records with regards to road safety when information is furnished (as this article indicates Google did).
Governments are large enough they can always find money to fix a road, so it's a matter of raising enough stink about it in public. With small-ish private owners and HOAs, the situation is reversed - there's only so much they can afford, and only so much damage bad PR can cause; you hit that limit, they'll just shrug and stop listening to you.
Do roads not break down and persist in an unsafe condition when under government stewardship?
They can, but in my experience, anything that approaches a collapsed bridge in severity is resolved quickly. Large potholes can hang around, which can be unsafe, but anything bigger doesn't get left to fester.
