It's a bloody shame she didn't end up as a Darwin Award contestant. On street view there is a walking path 20 feet from the road.<p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/361483/screenshots/streetview_29994.png" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/361483/screenshots/streetview_29994....</a><p>Upvoted just for the irony.
The next lawsuit will be taking Google's directions to Japan.<p><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=San+Diego,+CA&daddr=Tokyo,+Japan&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=51.497523,-0.149002&sspn=0.050441,0.132093&ie=UTF8&z=4" rel="nofollow">http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=San...</a>
Product of our compensation culture. Honestly, I think this is one of the growing problem areas for innovation - we are all too scared of being sued now.<p>It's going to cripple us as a society at some point.
Eh...walking on a highway isn't a guarantee of getting run over. Nor is cycling. I biked from University of Utah to Park City once, and rode on the freeway for a few miles, because there wasn't any other way to get there without going at least 5 extra miles. It wasn't as scary as walking across the street at a four-way stop sometimes has been, when inattentive drivers are involved.<p>I was on the shoulder of the road, but I have ridden on highways (not freeways) without a shoulder, on a road bike, before. When I did, I often picked my bike up and stood on the dirt beside the road and waited for a wave of vehicles to pass. I've employed similar tactics while walking along highways. She may not have.<p>I don't think walking where she walked was necessarily stupid. I think she may have just been unlucky. Or maybe she wasn't far enough on the shoulder of the highway. I also think the lawsuit is frivolous, because it hinges on the idea that she did something really stupid with Google's help.
Maybe this woman followed the directions exactly so that she could pursue a frivolous suit against Google. Mostly, I don't want to believe that someone could look at the situation and not see reality.
On the plus side Lauren Rosenberg's name is out there on the internet marking her as the person stupid enough to walk down a very busy highway and then sue others when she gets hit by a car.<p>This will doubtless come back to haunt her in the future.
if a human being looking at the road cannot tell that a situation is dangerous, how can a computer be expected to do it?<p>people need to understand that they're dealing with dumb mapping engines, not some all-seeing oracle.<p>if a situation is dangerous, you need to go back the way you came and get better information. if you plunge forward anyway, you do it at your own risk, just as you would be if you got directions from a human.<p>if your mama didn't teach you to walk on the left side of the road facing the traffic and to look both ways before you cross, it ain't google's fault.
Ima be rich! Where my kayak at?<p><a href="http://geographicjourney.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/google-goes-to-hawaii-via-kayak/" rel="nofollow">http://geographicjourney.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/google-goe...</a>
See, there's technological prowess, and there's common sense. We haven't reached that stage where we can totally rely on machines to guide our every move. We'd be robots by then.