If Google Maps told you to jump off a cliff, would you?
Sadly, Rosenberg is not the first to suffer because of poor walking directions from Google Maps mobile.
Google is being sued in U.S. District Court in Utah by a Los Angeles County woman who believes the company’s Maps application for mobile phones led her into mortal peril in January.
Lauren Rosenberg needed walking directions from one end of Park City, Utah, to the other, so she pulled up Google Maps on her mobile phone. When the walking directions pointed her to state Route 224, Rosenberg did what any reasonable person would do: walked down the highway.
Somehow, Rosenberg was struck and injured while walking on the highway. The driver of the vehicle that struck her, Patrick Harwood of Park City, is also named in the lawsuit, presumably because Rosenberg would just look greedy and/or stupid if she went after only Google.
If you have a minute, check out Park City on Google Maps. Specifically, look at state Route 224. It’s a four-lane highway with a shoulder on either side. Unless Harwood was driving recklessly – and I assume he wasn’t, because not one report on this story has mentioned he was cited or found at fault – the only way Rosenberg would have been hit by a car was if she had been walking in traffic.
Is it a dubious lawsuit? There’s an easy test to find out.
Is the defendant a person or entity with a lot of assets? Check. Are the plaintiff’s actions completely devoid of common sense, and, put in a similar situation, could anyone be expected to do the exact opposite? Double check. According to the test, this lawsuit is absolutely frivolous.
But hold the phone! According to reports, the disclaimer for Google Maps walking directions (Walking directions are in beta. Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.) is not placed on the mobile phone version. Without that vital information, the phone app might as well told Rosenberg, “Walk as you please, because those cars zooming past can’t hurt you while you’re following Google Maps directions!”
I’d like to know the thought process involved here. If while following Google Maps walking directions I arrived at a busy highway and they told me to walk on the highway, my thoughts wouldn’t be, “OK! That’ll work out well!” They would be some choice words about the fallibility of Google Maps. Then I’d walk on the shoulder.
And if Google can be sued for this, what can’t it be sued for? Can a student sue Google for leading him to a Wikipedia page that mistakenly reports someone as dead when he fails an assignment because of it? Can someone sue Google for emotional distress when a search for furrycrittersexit.com, a hypothetical website about stuffed animal donation, leads them to disturbing pornography? Can a company sue Google when its website is ranked poorly? That already happened?
Whatever the outcome of Rosenberg’s lawsuit, I want her to know something. You’re a complete moron! Who in their right mind would follow Google Maps to the letter and walk down the middle of a highway ?! The worst part of this isn’t that you’re a money-grubbing opportunist tying up the civil court system with your absurd lawsuit and are bound to at least get a settlement on a technicality; no, the worst part of all this is that you survived being hit by the car to get the chance to do that.
Hey, I feel a little better now.
