Credit: WCNC
Google Maps Sued After Dad Died Driving Off Collapsed Bridge On Way Home From Daughter’s Birthday Party
A family have sued Google Maps after a Navy veteran died, when the GPS tracker instructed him to drive over a bridge that had collapsed nearly a decade earlier.
Philip Paxson, from Florida, moved to Hickory in North Carolina with his two young daughters and his wife, Alicia Paxson, in 2020.
With the family being new to the area, they often relied on Google Maps as a means to help them get from A to B; something which would eventually lead to the dad-of-two’s tragic death.
A night of celebration turned to tragedy
On the fateful night of 47-year-old Philip’s tragic death, on September 30, 2022, the family had been celebrating their eldest daughter’s ninth birthday.
They had initially been planning to go on a camping trip which had been called off due to heavy rainfall, before deciding to hold a gathering at a friend’s home instead.
Following the celebrations, Alicia drove their two daughters home, while Philip stayed to help their guests tidy up and around 11pm he set off, completely unaware it would be his final journey.
The medical device salesman used Google Maps to navigate the short journey back home, with the GPS tracker allegedly directing him along a route that crossed the Snow Creek Bridge.
But what Philip didn’t know was that the privately owned bridge had actually collapsed during flooding in 2013, almost a decade prior.
GPS sent him over the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’
Despite the damage having occurred nine years earlier, the bridge had never been repaired and according to investigators, the barricades and warning signs telling people not to enter the bridge were missing on the night of Philip’s death.
At the time of the drive, the rain was falling heavily, and conditions were pitch black due to there being no street lighting, meaning there was nothing to alert Philip to the danger of the broken bridge, which had become known locally as the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’.
After allegedly being instructed to cross the bridge by his Google Maps navigation, the dad drove straight over the edge and fell around 20 feet into Snow Creek.
His Jeep Gladiator landed upside down in the water and he died of drowning.
It wasn’t until 9.45am the following morning that officials and emergency responders attended the scene and found the vehicle ‘upside down and partially submerged in a creek in an area where the roadway had washed out.’
Family launch lawsuit against Google
A year after Philip’s death, his wife Alicia launched a wrongful death lawsuit against Google LLC and Alphabet, as well as the private companies and landowners responsible for the bridge and road.
According to court documents, residents living in Hickory had regularly reported the collapsed bridge through Google’s ‘suggest an edit’ feature.
One resident is said to have submitted requests asking Google to mark the bridge as impassable in September and November 2020, two years before the fatal crash.
In response, Google has acknowledged receiving at least some of the reports via confirmation emails, and yet the GPS was still encouraging users to travel over the destroyed bridge, according to the lawsuit.
Alicia released an emotional statement stating the family wanted to make sure their ‘voices are heard’ so no one else will have to suffer losing a family member in the same way.
As per Law & Crime, she said: “Our girls ask how and why their daddy died, and I’m at a loss for words they can understand because, as an adult, I still can’t understand how those responsible for the GPS directions, and the bridge, could have acted with so little regard for human life.”
Paxson’s sister-in-law Kayla Bubar told WCNC, via Today: “He took a left and that left went to that bridge to nowhere, which is what they called it since 2013 when that bridge washed away and no one took responsibility to get that bridge fixed.”
She added: “Phil did not deserve to die like that and it is a horrible thing to go through. His children now have no father. We are not going to let it go and we are going to find out who is responsible for it.”
Meanwhile, Google has expressed sympathy for the incident, but has not accepted liability for Philip’s death.
“We have the deepest sympathies for the Paxson family. Our goal is to provide accurate routing information in Maps and we are reviewing this lawsuit,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
As of today, there has been no publicly reported judgement or settlement as a result of the lawsuit.
The case continues to be one of the most closely watched legal disputes involving GPS and navigation apps, which will inevitebly pave the way for whether mapping companies can be held liable when users are directed towards known hazards.
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