A fatal car crash in India sparks concerns over Google Maps

Google Maps once sent me on a highway across Northern Vietnam that is completely submerged for a considerable part of any given year. It also once tried to have me drive through an underground cave system that’s inaccessible without rappelling. Then there was the time a lovely woman in Pleiku spent an incredible amount of patient effort on using hand gestures and drawings to explain to the idiot American that, no, the tire repair her husband had expertly done was not, in fact, the high explosive bomb that Google Translate insisted it was.

NEVER trust AI-driven systems run by overworked engineers who haven’t been there, recently.

A similar story (but in the USA, last year) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37600015

However this n=1 legal situation plays out in India, it is not realistic to expect a free, world-wide app to provide both 100% up-to-date local data, and large liability payouts when that data proves wrong.

India's ASCI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_Standards_Council_... ) could push for more prominent warnings about that in Google Maps. But I expect there would be a great deal of push-back, and not just from Google.

I wish I still had the screenshot of goomaps circa 2011 when it sent me on a ~ 20 mile 2-highway interchange circuit tour of western MA, USA. I finally zoomed out and thrn could clearly see this big blue circlular path with no destination. No one should be subject to this in Western MA, it's on the same level as driving off a cliff.

Can google maps be held liable ?

Absolutely not.

Should the local government be held liable ? For sure.

It's their duty to mark the road off if the bridge is broken.