I use GPS for short trips all the time, and, while my kids are older now, I also used it back when they were 9 years old. Some people are just bad with directions, and I’m one of them. I get lost playing video games – I would have my son help me navigate through dungeons and whatnot, or else I would just go in circles.
So, just deal with the fact that someone might use a GPS for a short trip in and around their neighborhood.
It could be an adjacent neighborhood where he never went. I live in a neighborhood full of tract houses. The next neighborhood over which is maybe a mile away from one entrance to the other is full of large estates. I almost never have occasion to go there. It’s way more rural and I’m completely unfamiliar with it.
What do you mean “his neighborhood”? I wouldn’t consider the subdivision four miles away from the subdivision I live in to be “my neighborhood”. And I would have no idea how to navigate the residential streets in that subdivision. Why would I? I don’t have any reason to ever drive on them unless I’m specifically visiting a person who lives there. If he had never driven in that subdivision before it makes perfect sense that he would use Google Maps to navigate.
The bridge is in a residential area with a non-grid layout. The only way the person would be able to drive to that location without using a map or satnav would be if they’d driven there before.
Why do you think he would have had to have driven to that street or a neighboring street before?
I use Google maps every day to drop my son off at school and to go to work. Why? real-time traffic information.
I can only remember one time Google maps led me down the wrong path - trying to get to a waterfall in El Yunque National Forest. It had us going up and down some sketchy roads and remote watering holes, instead of a relatively straightforward drive on the main roads with a simple detour to get to that particular falls.
Well, he drove THERE. 
Thanks for the responses. You all just interact with your surroundings vastly differently than I. Not suggesting either approach is more or less “moral.” (This is the second time today I’ve been accused of making "moral judgments around here. I’m wondering if “morality” is expanding to mean something different than I thought.)
If I were as directionally impaired as a bunch of you are presenting yourselves (and presuming this guy to have been), then I’d be DAMNED careful not to be driving where I didn’t clearly see a road. But that’s likely just me.
A couple of months back a couple of cousins and I were traveling through Tennessee. Following the route the GPS suggested took us up one of the mountains on a not-particularly well-maintained two-lane road filled with sharp switchbacks, no guardrails, and a near-sheer drop maybe 20 feet off to the right. At one point we passed above one of the anchor points of the Gatlinburg Sky Bridge. We crept along the road as slowly as we could manage (no traffic either way) and it was the most anxiety I’ve ever felt on a road.
That’s funny, I remember that. The hand-painted sign was at a left turn? I had a feeling that it was people who just didn’t want a constant stream of traffic diverting off I-40 going past their homes. I can’t remember what I did now, but I didn’t make the left turn past the sign, because I didn’t have a paper map to confirm the route. I have a feeling that I continued straight, which took me back to I-40 just where the jam was starting, and I just sat through the jam.
IANALawyer, but not every responsibility can be waived or disclaimed, however in this case, I think Google is probably on fairly firm ground. Operators of motor vehicles are generally responsible for making the vehicle go and stop safely, not driving beyond the limits of their vision, the stopping capability of their vehicle etc.
If it was too dark to see properly, then it was unsafe to proceed, bridge or no bridge, regardless what the satnav is telling you.
I suppose there could be exceptional circumstances where it looked perfectly safe but was not - like if someone had laid some boards across the gap and it looked like a proper bridge, or the stonework on the opposite site created the illusion of a continuous roadway.
A failing for which he apparently thinks the death penalty is suitable.
I get that not everybody is familiar with ancient technology, but back in the day before GPS, most cars had these huge sheets of awkwardly-folded paper called “maps” in the glove box. These papers have these incredibly detailed drawings of an area, drawn as if a hawk flying overhead were exceptionally artistic and exceptionally interested in roads. Everything was to scale.
People used “maps” to find their way around–but because maps, unlike Google Maps, weren’t auto-updated, people had less trust in them to show everything as up-to-date.
And–this is the incredible part–people would use “maps” even to find their way around their own hometown! I had one for every town I lived in, prior to owning a smartphone.
Now you know!
I doubt it. Suppose the family gets a $10M award. That’s pocket change to Google.
But the downside identified by @Riemann is that if Google is found negligent in this case, then the applicable standard of care for Google goes up, potentially across the board, increasing its potential liability generally. That could mean higher insurance rates for Google. If they assess the increased risk is too high, they might cut back on their coverage.
In the daylight.
There is also a vast difference between knowing where something is on a through street and knowing where something is in the middle of a residential enclave. I’d use it to get me to the main road where I now know where I’m going. There are streets a half mile from my house that I might drive down once a decade.
Yeah, before Google maps, I had a map book containing all of the street maps for the town where I lived. The only people who knew all the streets in the area very well were taxi drivers and even they would sometimes rely on street maps. It’s just too much information to know all of it, for most people, in a lot of places.
My husband has a genius-level IQ, (yes really, he had a series of tests with a psychologist a few years ago) has worked for NASA and major government contractors, and wrote the software for an apheresis machine for blood plasma separation that is still used at blood donation centers. He is generally a brilliant guy. He also has zero sense of direction. Without GPS he can get lost going to places he’s been to dozens of times before. I’ve known him to get lost in the subdivision he lived in for twenty years.
He’s not lazy, unaware, stupid, negligent or any other pejorative those who think like the OP might call him. He has is a learning disability, not unlike dyslexia or dyscalculia, which makes understanding and processing directions difficult. He was told this by a qualified psychiatrist.
Did the victim here have such a disability? Of course I don’t know. And there are degrees of such things. But I just wanted to put it out there as a possibility.
What insurance?? Are there special policies for mapmakers?
That’s EXACTLY what we saw! But we turned around and went back to Gallup, turned south and then finally east again to I-40.
Why does it matter? Whether there’s a specialized insurance market or a large company like Google self insures, the economics of potential liability are the same.
This is me exactly. I have essentially memorized how to get to several places but I generally use my GPS to get me to places in town where I have been dozens of times but maybe not recently. I also have aphantasia which means that I am unable to visualize things in my head. Does he have that also?