Although Google Maps is pretty much the universal “ghetto GPS,” frequent users know that the directions given are not always the most reliable.
While they will usually get you where you’re going in the end, sometimes a portion of the route is somewhat untenable, ill-advised or otherwise requires you to stop for alternate directions. (As parodied in the above frame from a larger XKCD comic .) You can usually spot this, but a woman who used Google Maps for a pedestrian route on her BlackBerry is now suing Google because the directions given had her walking for a mile down a highway, concluding with the woman being struck by a car:
On January 19, 2010, (Lauren) 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.”
Sometime while walking down “Utah State Route 224,” Rosenberg was struck by a vehicle driven by Patrick Harwood of Park City, Utah. She is now suing Google for $100,000 to cover medical expenses and for punitive damages. She is also suing Harwood. As PC World points out , Google Maps does address the spotty coverage issue for walking directions- a note indicates:
“Walking directions are in beta. Use caution–This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.”
Since the warning doesn’t appear in smartphone versions of the service, it’s completely reasonably to expect that users will walk into traffic and nearly die and that the service should be disabled for all of us because one of us almost got killed using it.
