Google Maps updates continuously. I just plugged in the map to my mom’s house, and I’m seeing two traffic slowdowns and four reported speed traps along the way. They have a system to report problems. I’m looking at my app right now at “Add or fix a road”, and the option to show “road closed”. They’re not going to update automatically based on this report–but if they don’t prioritize “road closed” reports for human examination, that’s negligent.
Holy shit. In real time I barely even noticed the road was gone. Wild.
Yeah, even knowing it’s there, by the time I saw it in the video, I’d never have had enough time to stop.
This is the sentiment I just don’t get. What’s wrong with dialing up the app to get directions? Just today somebody tried to give me directions that started with the question, “do you know where the old City Coffee Shop used to be?”
Even a few miles from my house, I’m going to need something to guide me from the main road and through a neighborhood to my final destination. Even a few miles away, if I never need to go into that neighborhood (why would I need to?), how would I have any idea what to do once I enter? No amount of turning on my brain is going to let me know that it’s the second left, then the first right.
That is traffic information, which is updated in near real-time. The problem reporting system has been abused in the past, they can’t just believe everything that comes through. If they did, then who will be liable when somebody reports “bridge fixed!” when it is not?
There was a major rerouting of a state highway near me a few years ago. It took Google Maps a month or so to know the road had changed locations, which is ironic because during construction Google Maps was very good at reporting lane closures and congestion. I do not know if Google Maps is linked into state department of transportation systems, but doing so would be the easiest way to provide real time information about road closures.
I think there is a benefit derived from being aware of one’s surroundings and being able to navigate within them.
Sure, a couple of posters claim to have some profound limitation in this respect, but I suspect the vast majority of people could be quite capable if they got into the habit of thinking for themselves and observing the world around them.
And - DID you know where the old City Cofee Shop used to be? 
What does that benefit have to do with using a navigation app?
How does using a navigation app not count as “thinking for yourself?”
Well yeah, but being aware of my surroundings is completely different from knowing the side streets in a neighborhood a few miles away, that I never drive through.
I generally have a good sense of direction, and am competent at navigation. A big part of that is using the resources I have available to me. At one point in time that was paper maps, now it is electronic maps and GPS location data.
I’m not sure how observing the world around me is going to help when going to a place I haven’t been before. There are many places 5 miles from my house I have not been. I have not memorized all of those street names, or the addresses on those streets. I know how the major streets work. I frequently know where the side streets are, but have not had a reason to go down most of those side streets. I do know the side streets necessary to travel to places I go.
Yes, but only because I’d looked up the address of where I was going first, and used Google Maps to look at the destination. I’d never heard of that coffee shop before, but as soon as I saw the location on the map, I knew exactly what part of town it was in, how to get there using major roads, and what side street I’d have to take to reach the final destination. All of that is part of being competent at navigating. I could have easily found it without any future navigation aids. What I needed was something to tell me exactly where the street I wanted was located, because it was a small street, and I didn’t recognize the name. It was 6 miles from my house.
Now, if I was in the car with the nav system, I still would have put in the address, for all of the reasons listed above (traffic, road closures, etc.) If I was told to turn down a certain street and hit a large pothole and damaged my tire, I would not have blamed the mapping system.
In the case this thread is about, I think the majority of the blame lies with the people that failed to mark the known hazard. As can be seen in the videos above, lack of a road is very difficult to see at night. The victim may have been driving too fast, or they may have been going 15 MPH, and first realized something was wrong when they hit the water.
You have a completely inaccurate idea of how people use GPS technology, and your contempt for those who do is completely bizarre. How does listening to someone say “go left in about 5 miles” make someone “think for themselves,” whereas listening to the GPS voice say “go left in 5 miles” make them NOT think for themselves? A physical map, verbal directions from a local, or a GPS - they are all just tools. Go ahead and choose the ones that work best for you, but don’t assume that people who use a different set of tools are unobservant and don’t think for themselves.
For me and I suspect most people, the advantage of the GPS is that my brain is indeed free to think and observe more, because I’m not pulling off the road to read a map, or looking at instructions I scribbled on a piece of paper, or thinking, “um, did Jeff say to go LEFT at the next intersection, or right?”
Instead, I can fully concentrate on observing my surroundings. I am positive I am a safer driver because with a GPS I can focus on what’s happening around me, without worrying that I’ll miss a turn or be in the wrong lane.
And the beauty of the GPS is that if I am in the wrong lane and realize it would be unsafe to dart over quickly to take an exit or make a turn, I can go straight, knowing that the GPS will adjust and give me a new set of directions to reach my destination. Good 'ole Jeff, who gave me verbal directions back at his house half an hour ago, isn’t capable of doing that.
Indeed
Did they?
10,000 BC: “Og say new map technology make Thag get into habit of not thinking for himself and observing world around him”.
And sometimes the locals, like at gas stations, give deliberately wrong directions for laughs.
Different people think and prefer to interact with their surroundings differently than others. Which is great. All I know is the next time I drive off a nonexistent bridge, I’m not going to be blaming GPS. 
If you’ve got a spare 53 minutes, I recommend watching this episode of Nova.
But the basic idea is that what you perceive isn’t the same as what your eyes see. You brain isn’t taking in every single detail that’s in front of your eyeballs. It’s focusing on a few visual cues and filling in the rest based on your past experiences. Most of the time this is a good thing, but when something is out of the ordinary it can totally trick your brain into thinking you see things that aren’t there. Effectively, we see what we expect to see. The optical illusions you see in science books are a harmless way of illustrating how your perception of things can be different from what’s really there.
So based on that knowledge, I can imagine that on a road with no markings whatsoever, no center line or stripes or anything, the actual road surface it pretty much impossible to see in the dark even in the best of conditions. So you don’t actually pay attention to the road directly in front of you, you look at the edge of the road to figure out where the road is. And use visual cues like guardrails, which were still there where the bridge used to be. And I can imagine those visual cues could cause someone to perceive a bridge up ahead, even if they can’t literally see every detail of the bridge. And as others already pointed out, once they’re close enough to clearly see there actually isn’t a bridge, it’s probably too late to stop.
I know, some of you will say “But I would never do that. I would use due caution and be aware of my surroundings at all times.” No. You are a mere human just like the rest of us, and your brain takes the same sort of shortcuts everyone else’s brain does. You’re not conscious of it, but you do it. Your perception in certain situations might be different from someone else’s because you had different experiences in the past, but you’re still taking shortcuts.
Now, with practice one can learn to keep track of one’s surroundings, and that is a skill trained into people like pilots and air traffic controllers, but that isn’t a thing most of us learn to do.
ETA: But of course pilots are humans, too, and even trained pilots can fall into the trap of “we see what we expect to see, rather than what’s actually there.” If you’ve got another spare ~30 minutes, this video from Mentour Pilot illustrates an instance where that happened.
Yeah, this is pretty much exactly why we have the word ‘accident’. You can perform all due diligence and bad things can still happen that are outside of your control.
All that you get from due care and attention is a reduction of the likelihood of something bad happening.
Incidentally the police have switched to using the term) ‘incident’, because ‘accident’ implies that it was concluded that nobody failed in any way, whereas ‘incident’ is neutral; ‘something happened’.
Well, good for you!
In this scenario, I think the driver has maybe 5-10% responsibility for the incident,. From the pictures of that bridge and road, I could very well see myself missing the fact there’s a drop there – the guardrail is continuous, the road kind of blends into the part across the creek. In a dark situation I could see myself following the guardrail to the right, thinking I’m exercising proper caution, going slowly, and, bam, I’m down in the drink. I would put the vast majority of the blame on whoever was supposed to maintain that road and bridge. And whatever little blame is left to go around, if any, on Google.
Glad to here you agree that the driver shares SOME responsibility. Tho we likely would differ as to the percentage, my sole point was that he was SOMEWHAT at fault.
I’m wondering why there has not been talk of the city being liable. Even though the (non)bridge was privately owned/maintained, the streets on either end appear public. I could surely imagine making an argument that the city should have at least posted a sign warning drivers on the public roads of a clear potential hazard. Heck, I see enough accusations of steps public entities outght to take to make their roads safe for all manner of chuckleheads, the idea that they ought to place a sign - or block a turn off from the public road - does not strike me as unreasonable.
Now that we know that Google Maps will occasionally direct you into a creek, does that make any rethink your practices WRT such apps? Either more likely to ask a human with recent firsthand knowledge or feel like you have to be more vigilant in some situations?
Since using a navigation app allows me to drive more vigilantly than when not using such an app, this reaffirms my use of navigation.