Google Maps recommends route over bridge that collapsed 10 years ago

Safety
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I can understand though on a pitch black rainy night, approaching a bridge tha still has the steel guard rails on each side, just expecting there to be a real bridge. Try it some time. It’s very hard to see far enough ahead to know a section of a bridge is out under those circumstances. A few $2 steel posts driven in the ground with a chain seems like a reasonable expectation.

I still think the argument could be made that through adverse possession, a private road used by the public for ten years could be considered public and a responsibility of the county. So I think the law suit blew it by not including the county.

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The guy to whom I referred isn’t stupid, so he should know the difference between “turn ahead” and turn now, but because he always seems so panicked when he is behind the wheel, I think that he loses almost all sense of reason. This is the same guy whom I have referred to in the past, who consistently drives waaaay below the speed limit, and then gets annoyed when people honk at him.

He also refuses to use his A/C, and when he arrives at my house in the summer, his face is so red that it looks like it will explode, the back of his clothing is totally soaked with sweat, and he has problems hearing things for the next hour or so because of the wind roar in his car when he drives with the windows open.

Some people just shouldn’t be driving, and from what he sometimes says, I think that he may give up driving altogether fairly soon. He drives less than 900 miles per year, so there isn’t really a logical reason for him to own a car.

3 Likes
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I am a bit confused, the report says that they were traveling on a “private road” where the bridge was washed out. The reason I am confused it that Google does not travel down Private Roads so you will not normally find any street views of Private Roads.

Google maps and the information on their maps is provided by other sources, such as local municipalities (state, country, and city entities…).

The legal brief says that the accident occurred outside Hickory, in Wake County, North Carolina, on a private road crossing the “Snow Creek Bridge”.

I went to that location on Google Maps and I traced every road that crossed Snow Creek from its headwaters to where it empties into Lake Hickory. I found only one private road that crossed Snow Creek and it was just a long Private Driveway. All the other crossings were public roads with street view and had very well maintained bridges.

Granted, my research showed that Google had been notified that the bridge was out; but again, it was a private road and with that thought in mind, whose responsibility is it to block and or barricade a private road? Yes, Google maps may show that you can get from point A to point B by traveling down a private road, but that does not make traveling that road realistic, smart, or legal… How many “less-than-smart” folks drive down roads with a “Road Closed” sign because Google showed a route, and how many of those folk need rescuing because they got stuck or stranded?

When I lived in Texas, my motorcycle club used Goggle Maps to plan daytrips and we had to be careful as some of the trips directed us onto Private Roads, Private Roads that were well marked, “No Trespassing, Trespassers will be shot!” And we did not violate the sanctity of their land…

I am very sorry for the loss of life, but Google did not go out and get that information, it was provided to them by some municipality and I do not blame Google for not prioritizing the updating of a Private Road’s bridge being out, they have over 4-million miles of roadway in the US alone to maintain…

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We had a dead end private road going to the cabin and serving other cabins on that road. It was marked a private road though. If the public thought uses that road over a long period of time, I still maintain that it can become a public road through adverse possession and the county would be responsible. Having private road signs orb maybe even a washed out bridge could prevent a loss of the road to the public/county. Gotta be careful if someone is using your land over a long period of time, they can become the new owners unless once a year they are given notice. We were taught though that they also need to pay the taxes but the rules will vary from state to state.

I agree though it isn’t googles problem but whoever the owner should have just pounded some fence posts in the ground though. Now that I think of it, one of the places we used to bike to as kids was an old mill site. The bridge over the river was only half there and the approaches on both sides were gone with only the stone supports. Pretty much just a cow path on the west side, and a decent driveway on the east side. I don’t remember any signs warning the bridge was out. Wouldn’t have drowned in a foot or two of water but definitely would have come to an abrupt stop hitting the supports.

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We also have a cabin; it’s on the Schroon River in upstate New York and it is also on a Private Road. When you leave the Northway, you turn onto a public road (about a mile long…) that leads to our private road and Google Street View goes the length of the public road and stops at the beginning of our Private Road. But if you ask Google Maps for directions to our cabin (it has a real address), Google maps shows every address of every cabin on our private road to be at the same place, at the Northway’s exit, on the public road… How weird… never tried this previously…

We, the landowners maintain the road ourselves. We do our own hacking and wacking on any branches and generally fill in the ruts on our own areas. When the road gets too bad, we collect enough money to hire someone to spread sand and stone and grade it…

@Bing brought up a good point where the public might use the private road and will the county take it by Adverse Possession or more properly, Eminent Domain. In our case, our road is posted with “Dead End and No Trespassing Signs,” no one thinks they can take a shortcut…

The family has had the cabin for about 80-years, it is now mine and I’ve been going there for all my 73-years and they have not yet taken any action to do that… But, for many, many years the county has run a snow plow down the road, but they have never performed any road maintenance, not one scoop of sand, nor has any grader ever smoothed out the ruts…

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A point of interest, Rachael Ray, the American cook, and TV personality, who made the 30-minute meal respectable, lives just a few miles away on Lake Luzerne and her home (the one that caught fire, since rebuilt…) is also on a Private Drive…

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Online mapping services tend to have problems in the city of Mannheim, Germany because of that city’s unique system for street addresses: