Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Woman Hit by Car Sues Google for Bad Directions

by Amar Toor on May 31, 2010 at 10:30 AM

woman sues google after walking directions lead her across a busy highway
After using her BlackBerry to get walking directions from her Google Maps app, Lauren Rosenburg, of Park City, Utah, found herself at the edge of a busy highway. She decided to cross it (since Google told her to), and, as you'd imagine, wasted no time in getting hit by a car. Now, she's asking Google to pay up for giving her dangerous directions.

As Fortune reports, Rosenburg has filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming, according to court documents, that she "expects uses of the walking map site to rely on the accuracy of the walking directions given." Because Google's directions failed her, she's asking for a grand total of $100,000 in damages. The jaywalker is also suing Patrick Harwood, the guy who actually hit her as she was crossing Deer Valley Drive (Utah State Route 224).

As Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan points out, Google explicitly warns its map users that the directions it provides "may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths," and urges them to follow them with caution. The problem is, though, that the warning only appears on the Google Maps site, and not on its BlackBerry version.

The question that a Utah court will have to answer, though, is whether or not Google's really to blame for Rosenburg's utter lack of common sense. And although the details of the case have yet to be fully laid out, we're willing to be that the answer is "No." [From: Fortune and SearchEngineLand]

Tags: accident, cars, frivolous, frivolous lawsuit, FrivolousLawsuit, google, google maps, GoogleMaps, highway, lawsuit, lawsuits, ridiculous, route, utah, walking

Comments

3

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular