Rosenberg, a Los Angeles California native, is suing Google because Google Maps issued directions that told her to walk down a rural highway. She started walking down the highway--which had no sidewalk or pedestrian paths--and was struck by a car. She is suing Google for her medical expenses ($100,000), as well as punitive damages. She is also suing the driver who struck her, Patrick Harwood of Park City, Utah. On January 19, 2010, Rosenberg was apparently trying to get from 96 Daly Street, Park City, Utah, to 1710 Prospector Avenue, Park City, Utah. She looked up the walking directions using Google Maps on her Blackberry. Google Maps suggested a route that included a half-mile walk down "Deer Valley Drive," which is also known as "Utah State Route 224." There's not much more to say--she started walking down the middle of a highway, and a car hit her. Who wouldn't have seen that one coming? According to Rosenberg's complaint filing: "As a direct and proximate cause of Defendant Google’s careless, reckless and negligent providing of unsafe directions, Plaintiff Lauren Rosenberg was led onto a dangerous highway, and was thereby stricken by a motor vehicle, causing her to suffer sever permanent physical, emotional, and mental injuries, including pain and suffering." Google actually does offer up a warning about its walking directions--if you view Google Maps on a computer, it gives you the following message: "Walking directions are in beta. Use caution--This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths." Source ---- Women... How can we possibly live without them...
shouldn't something in her brain light up in those type of situations that it's dangerous... More fun in raccoon city...
I don't think you can use street view on a blackberry? Not sure though. Google is so smart. They want to eliminate incompetent people before they accomplish world domination. They are going to create a brand new world where stupidity is non existent -tongue2
You know, there's argument to be had on both sides. Google, and indeed, many of the other GPS or on line map or direction services had been the butt of jokes for years. Anyone who takes their word at anything should have their heads examined, meaning, they're not to be trusted, or at least their advice is taken with a grain of salt. There are clearly many, many examples which people had posted over the years (for a good laugh), which demonstrate the ineptitude or errors of such maps and systems. But, when does it stop being funny? Well, to this woman, who obviously relied on this map and service, had a less than optimal outcome. It nearly killed her. Imagine now, if a pedestrian street sign made the same mistake, instructing one to walk down what, in reality, was a motor vehicle thoroughfare, and one suffered injury; would the poster of the signage be at fault? That's a fairly obvious, yes. Google has become so big and widely accepted that inherent with that bigness, is a degree of responsibility to the public. By releasing maps and giving directions that can place trusting people into dangerous situations, and then claiming no responsibility based on the "beta" nature (does the victim even know what "beta" implied?) of such maps, is really a very bad corporate response that seems counter to the culture of Google. They really need to take stock of this, admit not just to the public, but realize to themselves that they were genuinely at fault. In essence, the woman was dumb; but Google was even dumber for letting her get her hands on one of their poorly constructed maps. The map should never have been released in the first place. While the idea of "public beta" may be acceptable with one sitting home with one's computer; I doubt that courts would find the same "non responsibility" for user harm if said beta-ware impacted vehicular traffic and public safety, as it did here.
Ralph, would you mind if I refute your arguments? I'd like to play the programmer's advocate lol If Google went further and actually defined what "beta" means, victims such as this lady could just go deeper and deeper and find loop holes in disclaimers (i.e: if google defined beta as "product still in development" or "incomplete", users can still go "oh, then google should not have made this product available to the public if it's not ready"). My point is, as detailed as a company can try to write a disclaimer, you can always dig further and further for loopholes. Anyways, even if the lady didn't understand what "beta" meant, Google stated " Use caution--This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths". This clears Google of any wrong doing. As a programmer, I believe Google is following the exact process of application development and this process is shared by all other program development companies, not just Google. Other companies also put similar disclaimers in their open betas, now if this "response" is an error in product testing, then the process used by all these companies should be blamed, not specifically Google's culture.. For Google to provide the safest product (in this case, Google Maps), it needs to be thoroughly tested.. However if my point above about people continuously digging for flaws in the disclaimers, companies can never fully and thoroughly test their products..... Despite the fact that these apps are constantly tested by programmers and testers, bugs can be missed, which is why there's open beta testing, to make fully sure that the released product is clean of bugs (as much as possible). Now during open beta testing, despite the fact that Google disclaimed clear warnings, if users continue to use the app like their life depended on it, then it is the user's fault if harm comes to them... There's no way a programmer can come up with a super safe and fail proof application on the first try, it's simply impossible.. But I believe that the disclaimer " Use caution--This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths" clears Google of any wrong doing in this matter. And since this response is basically used by all programming companies, this eliminates the claim that these responses counter Google's culture...... just my two cents but regarding OP's story, im sorry i feel bad for her, but there's no way she's going to win the lawsuit... worst comes to worst, Google may just come to a deal with her and partially compensate her or something... but i don't think that'll happen
LOL... Of course, you're right in all of your arguments, but you're also wrong in your perspective, and I think that this has to do with your programmer's background. Computer programmers tend to think of products as an evolution process; v1.0, v1.1, v1.2, et cetera, with improvement being incorporated along the way with regular updates. Public safety demands perfection from the date of release. If people get hurt by it, it isn't, "oh well, we'll patch it with the next release" but rather "dammit, we're responsible for having killed all those people." That is my argument, that Google maps isn't a programming work in progress (which is Google's claim), but a real life product that can genuinely impact people's lives and safety. As such, they need to held to a much higher standard. Suppose Boeing or McDonald's treated their products as a programming initiative? Now can you understand what I'm getting at?
The difference between Boeing and software is that, you don't fly the airplane the pilot does. However as an application user, you do use the application. Planes are thoroughly tested by pilots... as software developers, we need the pilots, and the pilots are the users (i.e. you lol) The difference between McDonald's and software is that food chains abide to a food safety standard.. The problem is, no such standards currently exist for applications... Higher standards don't exist because there are no standards to begin with.. The way standards are made, is by having one institution take the initiative and take the first step. Google is doing just that. But for now, programming has no standards to apply to. (That doesn't mean programmers aren't trying to create a standard...) Now I ask you, from programmer to user.... I am very curious to know to this question, because I honestly do not know. As a user, what do you believe the initiative should be? Because I can tell you right now, it will never happen that a programmer will create a program right the first time... It is an impossible feat
I actually agree with you in that programming has to go through some serious debugging before being considered usable. But what you're also not recognizing is that Boeing has millions of lines of code written into it's avionics. Just like car computers, airplanes use computers to control the aircraft. Suppose there was a glitch in one of the lines that controlled fuel flow? It isn't really the pilot after all, is it? The user, has to rely on a product being truthful as well as being useful. Google's maps, while being truthful, was truthful in such an unusable way that it impacted on the safety of the user. Another example of this would be to create a map that required one to refer to other links or footnotes. While truthful, it is truthful in such an unusable way that for all intents, it becomes no longer usable. Maps, by their nature, cannot be subject to addenda, obscure annotations, and preconditions; to do so would render the map unusable. Google's map should not have shown that route as being available to pedestrians in the first place, or should have clearly labeled that route as being "inherently too dangerous for pedestrians" instead of just having a general disclaimer. While both statements would have been true, one is more truthful and immediately points to the risks involved while the other just seeks to avoid responsibility for negative user impacts. Google had always aspired for the former, but in this case, it clings to the latter. I also agree with your statement that creating a program right the first time around is an impossible feat. What you're failing to see is that such a program should not be released upon an unsuspecting public. Those lines of code that control fuel flow in Boeing aircrafts probably went through years of debugging and thousands of version upgrades before actually being put into a test plane, much less a production aircraft. Google needs to recognize that it can no longer use public safety in such beta processes, or else it is going to hurt a lot of people.
I see what you're saying... but i dont think they're doing it out of negligence... there a damn lot of small streets in the world to much to keep track of... its like trying to keep track of every single cell in your body... its impossible... what would you suggest google does?
No, I don't think that they're doing it to be malicious (which is the term I think you're looking for, because her lawyer will almost certainly try to prove negligence) either. But using yourself as an illustration, I think there is a general disconnect between programming perspective and the issue of impact on public safety. Whilst programmers tend to look upon what they do as a work in progress, the public needs and expects it to be perfect from day one. Indeed, this goes right back to what you stated about the near impossibility of a software being flawless at its debut; that everything has a few bugs when it is first released. Well, to the public, insofar as safety is concerned, that is not acceptable. This is what I think the problem was; the programmers at Google thought that it would be good enough to trial on the public, while the obvious outcome was, a member of the public was nearly killed. The moral of this story is, that the programmers at Google need to realize that they need to act more like the programmers at Boeing; they need to beta this stuff behind closed doors for a very long time before foisting it onto what can be a very dumb public. Indeed, that is going to cost them a lot more money to do; but when you're dealing with consumer trust and safety, you have to go the extra turns to ensure that your product is idiot proof. In this case, the woman was an idiot for walking down a highway. But Google, which one would imagine to be bit smarter, IMHO was perfectly willing to hold her hand and walk down that highway along with her. That, I suspect, is what a jury is also going to see.
