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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Technology
Abené Clayton

Family sues Google after Maps allegedly directed father off collapsed US bridge

The Google Maps app is seen on a smartphone in New York.
Lawyers for Paxson’s family say the bridge was flagged to Google several times before. Photograph: Patrick Sison/AP

The family of a North Carolina man is suing Google for negligence after he died from crashing into a creek below a collapsed bridge at the alleged behest of Google Maps, the Associated Press reported.

On 30 September 2022, state troopers found ​​Philip Paxson drowned in his overturned pickup truck beneath a bridge that had collapsed nearly a decade earlier. Paxson, who was 47 and from Hickory, North Carolina (about 60 miles north-west of Charlotte), was returning home from his daughter’s ninth birthday before the accident, his mother-in-law wrote in a post on Facebook. She added that neither the destroyed bridge nor the road leading to it had any barriers or warning signs to alert drivers of the hazard.

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