The case dates back to September 2022, when Philip Paxson from North Carolina, USA, was returning home from his daughter’s birthday party. The man used Google Maps navigation and blindly trusted the directions while driving through unfamiliar terrain.
He was supposed to trust Google Maps. He fell from a destroyed bridge
As described by the man’s family, they claim that the Maps directed Paxson to a disused bridge that had collapsed nine years earlier and was never rebuilt. The driver didn’t know about it and fell off the road into a six-meter cliff. He died on the spot. He was found by the services in a riverbed, in a car that had overturned and was partially submerged in water.
The victim’s family decided to sue Google for negligence because – as they claim – the company knew that the bridge was impassable. This is evidenced by numerous reports from local residents who wanted Google to exclude the bridge from the proposed routes in Maps. The lawsuit shows that in September 2020, one of the residents used the “suggest a change” function in the application, and in November 2020, the company confirmed receipt of the report and declared to check the usefulness of this suggestion. However, the family claims that despite the passage of time, Google has not decided to exclude the bridge from the routes proposed to drivers.
Google spokesman José Castañeda did not reveal details of the case in a comment to AP. He expressed his condolences to the victim’s family and declared that the company was analyzing the lawsuit and its goal was to provide accurate directions in Maps.
However, the Paxsons did not limit themselves to suing Google itself. The officers who arrived at the scene of the accident testified that the road leading to the bridge was not blocked or fenced in any way. There were also no signs warning drivers of the collapsed bridge. As a result, several private companies were also sued and may have been responsible for the lack of markings on the bridge. Responsibility for this obligation was not to lie with either local or state authorities.
Source: Gazeta
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