Google Maps took the driver to a bridge that collapsed 10 years ago: a man died

The family of a North Carolina man is suing Google for negligence after he died falling into a creek under a collapsed bridge where Google Maps led him. Writes about this The Guardian.

Photo: IStock

On September 30, 2022, state troopers found Phillip Paxson drowned in an overturned pickup truck under a bridge that had collapsed nearly a decade earlier.

Paxson, 47, of Hickory, North Carolina, was returning home from celebrating his daughter's ninth birthday, his mother-in-law wrote in a Facebook post. She noted that neither the destroyed bridge nor the road leading to it had any guardrails or warning signs to warn drivers of the danger.

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“It was a dark, rainy night, and he followed a GPS that led him along a concrete road to a bridge that dropped into a river,” the report said. “He will be greatly missed by his family and friends.” It was an accident that could have been prevented. We mourn."

The Paxson family's lawsuit names, in addition to Google, a number of private management companies that were responsible for the site where the accident occurred and the surrounding areas.

A Google spokesperson said: “We extend our deepest condolences to the Paxson family. "Our goal is to provide accurate driving information in Maps, and we are reviewing this lawsuit."

Lawyers for the victim's family say several people tried to bring the bridge to Google's attention and cited an email exchange between a Hickory resident who tried to use the "suggest an edit" feature in 2020 to pressure the company to fix the problem. Google never responded to the proposal, lawyers say.

“Our girls ask how and why their dad died, and I am unable to find words that they could understand, because, as an adult, I still don’t understand how those who were responsible for GPS directions and bridge, could act with such disregard for human life,” admitted Alicia Paxson, Phillip Paxson’s wife.

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Phillip Paxson is not the first person whose death has been linked to GPS.

In 2020, an 18-year-old Russian motorist froze to death after he and a friend were stuck in their car for a week following a Google Maps route along the infamous “Road of Bones.” In 2019, a truck driver in Jakarta, Indonesia, drove off a cliff after following a Google Maps motorcycle-only route. In 2015, 51-year-old Zohra Hussain died in a car crash in Indiana after her husband, following the built-in GPS in his Nissan Sentra, drove off an unmarked toll road that led to a collapsed bridge. Her husband, Iftikhar Hussain, sued the state of Indiana over the lack of barriers.

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