this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Tech company faces negligence lawsuit after Philip Paxson died from driving off a North Carolina bridge destroyed years ago

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You're expectations of Google would be like demanding that the map company who printed maps must provide a free, updated map every time that the roads change. Life doesn't work that way - sometimes people need to take responsibility for their own stupidity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

NAL, but I think part of it is that Google does update its map regularly (you see the latest edition whenever you access it online)

Where Google arguably failed was, despite having a system to report discrepancies which people used for this collapsed bridge, Google failed to make the routing changes that could be reasonably expected by 5+ years. They could have used some combination of satellite images, user reports, the Google car etc.

Even if you were to compare it to paper media: If you published a new edition twice a year, you had incorrect information, people reported it to you yet you still failed to correct it for 10+ editions and it causes harm to someone, then as a publisher you may be liable.