The family of a US man who drowned after driving off a collapsed bridge claims he died because Google’s maps were out of date. Philip Paxson’s family is suing Google for his death, claiming that Google was negligent in failing to show that the bridge had collapsed nine years before.
Mr. Paxson died in September 2022 while attempting to drive across a damaged Hickory, North Carolina bridge. Google’s spokesperson stated that the company was looking into the allegations. On Tuesday, the case was filed in Wake County civil court. According to the family’s lawsuit, Mr. Paxson, a father of two, was heading home from his daughter’s ninth birthday party at a friend’s house and was in an unfamiliar neighbourhood at the time of his death. His wife had already driven his two daughters home, and he had stayed behind to help clean up.
“Unaware of local roads, he relied on Google Maps, expecting it to direct him home to his wife and daughters safely,” the family’s lawyers said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Tragically, as he drove cautiously in the rain, he unwittingly followed Google’s out-of-date directions to what his family later learned was known for nearly a decade as the ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ crashing into Snow Creek, where he drowned.”
According to the lawsuit, after the bridge collapsed in 2013, local residents repeatedly contacted Google to request that their online maps be changed.
