A woman injured by a car on a busy road is suing Google for giving her dangerous walking directions.
Lauren Rosenberg used Google Maps to get directions on how to walk between two addresses in Park City, Utah. These included the instruction to walk for about half a mile along the very peaceful-sounding Deer Park Drive.
But, says the filing, Deer park Lane turned out to be another name for State Route 224 – “a rural highway with no sidewalks, and a roadway that exhibits motor vehicles at high speeds, that is not reasonably safe for pedestrians,” it reads.
“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 severe permanent physical, emotional and mental injuries.”
Rosenberg says she’s incurred medical bills of more than $100,000 from the accident, and is asking for this, plus loss of earnings and punitive damages.
On a PC, Google provides a warning that sidewalks may be missing. On the Blackberry Rosenberg was using, though, there’s no such message.
Presumably Google was working on the assumption that anyone intelligent enough to operate a phone was intelligent enough not to walk out onto a busy road. Not a reasonable assumption, it seems.
