Three individuals have been killed in India after the route they had been following on Google Maps reportedly took them over the sting of a broken bridge. The three males drove off the bridge crossing the Ramganga River in northern India, regardless of the span being badly broken earlier this yr.
The three males had been driving between Gurugram and Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh within the north of India. Alongside the route they had been following, the three males had been reportedly directed throughout a bridge that spanned the Ramganga River, a tributary to the Ganges, reviews the Financial Instances.
The bridge they drove over, nevertheless, was in items after it was broken throughout intense flooding “months in the past.” Regardless of its situation, there have been no blockades throughout the bridge and the route they had been following on Google Maps reportedly informed them that it was secure to hold on and cross the bridge, because the Financial Instances provides:
The incident occurred late at evening, leaving the victims stranded with out quick help. It was solely on Sunday morning that villagers from Khallpur noticed the automobile underneath the unfinished bridge and alerted the authorities. Police groups from Faridpur and Dataganj rushed to the spot.
Faridpur Circle Officer (CO) Ashutosh Shivam confirmed the accident, stating that the our bodies had been retrieved utilizing a ship.
Faridpur SHO Rahul Singh shared that the victims had been navigating with Google Maps when the accident occurred. “We recovered the identification card of a Gurugram-based safety firm within the automobile,” Singh mentioned. The victims had been recognized as Nitin Kumar (30), his cousins Ajit Kumar (35) and Amit Kumar (30). Nitin and Ajit, residents of Farrukhabad, labored as drivers for the safety agency, whereas Amit, a distant relative, hailed from Mainpuri.
The three males had been reportedly touring to a marriage when the incident occurred, and relations have now rallied collectively calling for solutions as to why security measures weren’t in place on the bridge, reviews Futurism:
In keeping with native officers, cell information indicated the group was utilizing Google Maps proper up till the accident occurred.
The victims’ households have since criticized the absence of security measures and known as for accountability.
“They had been checking the route utilizing Google Maps and fell from the unfinished bridge,” one of many sufferer’s brother-in-law Pramod Kumar informed The Financial Instances. “The street ought to have been blocked, nevertheless it wasn’t. The maps shouldn’t have proven that the bridge was full.”
Often when a bridge collapses like this, Google updates its Maps software program to indicate that the street is closed or the crossing is unavailable, because it did when the Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed earlier this yr. As such, it’s comprehensible that the victims’ households need to know why they had been despatched on this route, however a much bigger query is possibly why wasn’t there a barrier over the broken roadway?
Whether or not security warnings had been in place or not, this isn’t the primary time that Google has come underneath fireplace for directing individuals down unsafe roads. Final yr, the widow of a driver killed after driving via a broken bridge tried to sue the tech firm.
