Google faces lawsuit after man drove off collapsed bridge following Map instructions

The family of a man from North Carolina who died after following Google Maps' instructions and crashing his car off a bridge collapsed is suing Google for negligence.

Philip Paxton, a medical device salesman and father of two drowned in September last year after his jeep plunged off the bridge that had broken off nine years ago.

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, his family claimed that multiple people had notified Google Maps about the collapse in the years leading up to Paxson’s death and had urged the company to update its route information.

Paxton and his wife, Alicia, invited their daughter to a party at a friend's house in the North Carolina area of Hickory with a camping theme. However, the lawsuit claims that Paxton was "generally unfamiliar" with the region and had never been to the house before to that day.

Paxton stayed up late to tidy up before taking a solo drive back to his house while his wife left early to set up. Paxton allegedly did not realise there was a collapsed bridge as he used Google Maps to make the roughly 10-minute drive back home, according to the lawsuit.

Around 11pm, in the pitch-black area of the bridge where no artificial lighting was present, Paxton’s vehicle “drove off an unguarded edge of the bridge and crashed approximately twenty feet below”, the suit says.

According to WBTV, emergency personnel discovered the 47-year-old's jeep upside down and partially immersed in the creek.

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