Lawyers for the Paxsons allege that several people have tried to flag the washed-out bridge to Google and have included email correspondence between a Hickory resident who tried to use the “suggest an edit” feature in 2020 to get the company to address the issue.

If Google were notified of this, and failed to act in a timely manner, they should face consequences. Obviously they're not the only people who dropped the ball, but they definitely failed this person.

[–] ExLisper@linux.community 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's interesting but I don't think Google has a legal obligation to update all the roads in the world in a timely manner. Maybe if you could prove that they promote Google Maps as a '100% accurate, always up to date mapping solution' you could argue false advertising but I'm pretty sure they don't claim that. I'm pretty sure that instead they tell users not to trust the indications blindly and to always pay attention to the road.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not an obligation to proactively update the map, but if someone notifies them about a closure or other safety issue, in my view they have a duty of care to act.

[–] lustrum@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Absolutely. Don't know why Google is being absolved here. Yeah they're not the sole reason the car drove off the bridge but they are a contributing factor and have a duty of care.

[–] ExLisper@linux.community 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. How 'duty of care' is defined and established? Never heard of the term.

[–] lustrum@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a common legal term in the UK. Wikipedia had a pretty good overview.

[–] ExLisper@linux.community 0 points 1 year ago

Ok, so we have:

the foreseeability of harm to the injured party;
the degree of certainty he or she suffered injury;
the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered;
the moral blame attached to the defendant's conduct;
the policy of preventing future harm;
the extent of the burden to the defendant and the consequences to the community of imposing a duty of care with resulting liability for breach;
and the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved.[25]
the social utility of the defendant's conduct from which the injury arose

You pretty much have to prove that Google knew that not updating the map info will cause death with some degree of certainty, that it's possible for them to process all update requests in a timely manner or that if it's not possible they should stop offering navigation because it's utility does not outweigh the dangers.

I would say this is what we're discussing from the beginning and this brings nothing new to the case.

[–] xhci@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What legal obligation do they have to do so? Does this apply to every mapmaker and/or paper maps as well? Have timelines been defined for compliance?

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the case of paper maps, if they were notified of the bridge, and proceeded to publish a new version of the map showing it as operational, then yes, they should face consequences. paper maps don't provide turn by turn directions though, so less safety critical.

[–] xhci@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is it the county’s responsibility to notify every map maker? I have always seen maps as “best effort” since I’ve never seen a “perfect” map.

Maps are a really difficult problem since they are by nature a collaborative effort. I would much rather have them than not even with all their flaws, but I also recognize them for what they are.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Realistically, a government couldn't notify every single map maker, but my view is that the map maker should be obliged to act when notified.

[–] xhci@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah - I agree that’s how it should work. I just can’t think of a way to legally enforce that.

For example, you’d need to prove you saw the notification, then verify its legitimate (this can be complicated), publish a revision (what qualifies as timely?), then perhaps even publish a notification that there’s a revision.

Meanwhile, people have been operating without the revision for some amount of time, and IMO should expect that their current version might not be totally accurate anyway.

In the current framework, as soon as you publish a map, it’s out of date anyway. I don’t see how people can be expected to treat them as an ultimate source of truth on that concept alone.