indyfabz

Maybe he was paying attention but could not see the missing bridge. It was pitch dark out (11 pm) and raining. He could have been going 10 mph and could not see the gap for all we know.

You might be surprised to learn that a good number of car-train collisions don't occur when a train hits a car, but rather when a car runs into the side of a train occupying a crossing. Sounds crazy, right? How in the world can someone drive into the side of a moving train passing directly in front of them? Some of those collisions caused by carelessness. But not all of them. Dark roads, bad weather and dark colored equipment without retroreflective tape attached to it can be contributing factors.

njkayaker

Strawman. No one is even hinting otherwise.

What are the other parts of driving?

njkayaker

I'm not sure if the people making those sorts of statements (like the one you replied to) have ever driven.

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It's possible that the routing "confidently" saying the way was open made the driver less cautious than he would have been without directions.

njkayaker

Someone dying and getting sued for it lit a fire under Google's butt.

(Google would have been even more screwed if, after being sued, someone else had an issue there.)

fishboat

While I don't doubt that Google creates lots of meta data(this, in a large part, is what they "sell"), I doubt they create the base map data. This is a case of why reinvent the wheel. There are many vendors of the fundamental geographic information as there is a huge number of ways this data can be used. It's a world onto itself. Creating and maintaining the data is expensive. What Google does, as big as it is, is but one use.


Early in my career, shortly after I started applying for patents, my section manager, an older & accomplished applications chemist, suggested I should never make legal conclusions unless I was attorney...and they'll have differing opinions too. To think a simple statement as above hasn't been considered by a few of the better attorneys at Google/Alphabet is..I don't know..you pick the term. To not cover Google's potential liability for errors in their map offerings(of which there are probably tens of thousands or more, and completely forseeable..forever, as new ones will crop up daily) would, in my opinion, constitute malpractice on the attorney's part. The plaintiff may have a case, but the odds are extremely small..so small as to make getting hit by lightening seem like a sure thing, in my mind at least. I wish her luck, but I wouldn't invest in her case.

Of course, at the end of the day, anything said here is like sticking your hand in a bucket of water. Thrash about all you like, but when you pull it out the bucket looks the same.

njkayaker

The Streetview images are collected by Google vehicles. That process also provides map data. They are a huge mapping company.

Here's an article from over 10 years ago describing all they do:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...ything/261913/

Here's another from 5 years ago:

https://blog.google/products/maps/go...owers-our-map/

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No one is thinking (or suggesting or hinting) this. It's another strawman.

Yan 

Yes, that IS crazy. Because it's hard to imagine someone being that distracted / inattentive / medically blind. And yet it happens.

Plenty of people die every year when they drive off embankments for no apparent reason. Why? Inattentiveness and /or distraction. Is it the road's fault for daring to turn? Who will you sue? Are you going to sue "geometry"? NO.

The only difference in this case is that there's some scapegoat to sue. Google Map is a MAP. The map is not responsible for driving. The driver is the sole responsible party for operating a vehicle.

Suing Google here is the equivalent of someone choosing to kayak into a storm, drowning, and the family suing the Weather Channel for not warning about the storm. Sorry, you died because you forgot to use your eyeballs, not because of the weatherman.

The death is tragic. But just because you died, doesn't mean it's always someone else's fault. Hard pill to swallow I know. Life is harsh. I get you two are fully into the out of control modern lawsuit culture, but not everyone is.

fishboat

You seem to have many opinions..but you should do some more homework.

Another piece of advice I was given long ago, "..know what you know, know what you don't know, and know the difference.." though the fly in that ointment is always not knowing what you don't know.

In any event, I'm not going to debate it with you..though you seem to enjoy 'debates' as you're in quite a few...have fun..

njkayaker

You have no idea what happened in this case. Again, you are just making crap up.

No, it's not like that at all.

njkayaker

Says the person propping strawman up to tilt at.

WTH anyway? I backed my statements with references. You didn't.

Your debate here is terrible. At least you have these sense to cease flailing with it.

pdlamb

While I don't know anything about the legal case, I still have a few observations.

First, that "road" looks like it's about 1.25 lanes wide. Most people would not go flying down such a narrow road at night in the rain, and most people who passed drivers ed would know they shouldn't outdrive their headlights.

Second, I have to wonder what the driver was doing. Was he going home drunk after the bar closed? Was he going to somebody else's house? If the latter, wouldn't the homeowner have told him, go that way, not this way, the bridge is out?

Third, at least when I lived there, the NC DOT was responsible for all public roads in the state. (And yes, somehow the roads in Raleigh were the best in the state.) The widow's going to have an uphill fight against sovereign immunity if that's the case. If it's a private road, well, none of the citations have shown any proof, so the lawyers will have some lawyering to do.

All that's wrapped up in what I referred to as the lawsuit lottery upthread. Somebody in your family died? We (Ambulance Chasers PC) will be happy to sue for 50% of the proceeds. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will figure it's cheaper to pay us off (AC PC pays ourself first!) than to fight it.

Yan 

"I have no idea what happened?" What "what"?? There is no "what".

Google Maps was outdated. Wait, a map was outdated? Oh no shock and horror how can that be possible??? This guy had false confidence in the virtual world of Google Maps, forgot to activate his meat eyeballs in the three dimensional world of real life, suicided himself into an obstacle of mother nature, and perished. He became statistic, next to hundreds of other inattentive drivers around the world who suicide themselves into telephone poles each year. Sad trombone sound, the end. Not every story needs to be three layers deep in conspiracy theories.

There is no other "what". There is nothing "else". It's the simple story of an automobile death. The end.

The widow thinks she can sue Google. She has no case. Sad.

njkayaker

Huh? Are you really this confused?

You have no idea what the person was doing when the incident occurred.

Yan 

I'm not confused, you're simply two steps behind everyone else, buddy lol.

njkayaker

Again...

This is utter ******** you made up.

You should stop saying this sort of nonsense and you should certainly not keep trying to defend it.

Yan 

I know exactly what he was doing. He was driving. He was following Google Maps. He wasn't paying attention. He drove into a river and drowned. It's all in the article. Can you read?

Or are you saying he was taking a nap and his dog was driving? Are you saying a ghost ran in front of him and he dodged into the river? Are you saying he WAS paying attention but he actually intentionally drove into the river for the purpose of committing suicide? Just what conspiracy theory are you suggesting? Why are you mumbling? Just come out and say it.

njkayaker

You should top embarrassing yourself.

indyfabz

Since we’re making up things out of whole cloth…He swerved to avoid a 12 point buck in the road, which distracted his attention from the gap in front of him.

Yan 

That's an interesting way of sitting down and shutting up lmao.

Listen, I've read the crap you're always writing here to other people. I know the very point of your existence on these forums is to be as obnoxious as possible and annoy the f out of as many people as you can.

It's very simple. Either this guy was attentive, or he was inattentive. One or the other, yes? Either he wasn't paying attention to the road and died inadvertently, or he was paying full attention, but for some reason he somehow died anyway. One or the other, yes?

The poor guy is dead. Now any normal human being with a regular functioning brain would say, wow, that's crazy, let this be a cautionary tale for the rest of us who are still alive, a tale for why we shouldn't put our lives on our phones, and actually pay attention to the road when we are driving. What a concept, right?

Then you have Njkayaker. You gotta be contrarian right? You think edgy is cool, yeah?

How DARE you suggest this guy was inattentive? Njkayaker declares. You have no idea what happened there! Njkayaker says. Njkayaker is the guy who must scream the loudest in the room and out-idiot everyone else. That's what Njkayaker lives for.

You know what, you're right. I hadn't considered the possibility that this guy was fully attentive to the road, yet nevertheless decided to die on purpose. Thank you very much for bringing this possibility to my attention.

njkayaker

^^^^ More garbage.

So much for trying to give helpful advice!

mschwett 

google and all that aside, it seems like a big part of the danger/problem here is that there wasn't a barricade placed as close as possible to the driveway to 2334 24th street. driving through a cyclone fence on concrete footings a hundred feet or so before the creek should certainly alert anyone that they need to stop, with plenty of time to do so at the speeds someone should be driving on a road like that. someone who made a paper map a year before the collapse would have no obligation to "recall" all those maps, as they come with no guarantee that nothing changes. i'm not sure why a digital map should be different, but i suppose the lawyers will figure that out.

njkayaker

The collapse happened in 2012. We are taking about updating maps ten years later. Not one year earlier. No one is suggesting being able to predict the future.

Digital (online) maps have the advantage of being updated and available for use very quickly. On the order of hours even. Possibly, even shorter. Google routinely updates maps to reflect traffic issues within minutes. And, being online, (nearly) every Google user has immediate access to the latest version.

Printed maps would take many months (including drawing, printing, distribution, and getting them into users’ hands). Probably, longer. Many (likely most) users would keep using the old maps they already had.

A paper map might be updated every two years. Digital maps might be updated many times a day. Applying paper map performance to digital maps doesn’t make sense.

You are kind of suggesting that emergency telephone calls only need to satisfy the performance standards of mailing letters (being a hyperbolic a bit).

abdon 

Ok, if instead of Google maps he was just driving down the same road, whose fault would it have been then?

fishboat

The attorney would find someone, anyone at all, with the deepest pockets. Getting an award from a jury against someone who's broke is a..somewhat lacking victory, at least for the attorney who's working for the money.

mstateglfr 

Was he looking at his phone? I haven't read any report that he was looking at his phone and not looking at the road.
Lemme know where you read he was looking at his phone.