this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Don't get tricked by big media the way they did with the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit.
Google was notified for a decade that they had a dangerous route listed. Safety standards aren't made for people acting perfectly, they're made for having multiple layers of safety for things that can kill or maime you.
Yes, there is SOME level of personal responsibility, but if Google told 100,000 people to do something dangerous, it's inevitable that someone would have a combination of factors that caused someone to do it and die.
Google just claims over and over that it's too big and has too much data to be able to have any sort of customer service or maintenance, and this is the result.
Yes, other people are also responsible, but that's what the legal system is for, to look at evidence and not headlines and place blame. I wouldn't be surprised if Google settles out of court on this one and promises to fix their maps.
"ok, google. how many pieces should you be sliced into in order to rectify this?"
Well their name ain't Google no more.
Let's start with 26 slices.
This kind of thing is why I hate Google Maps. There is no way to ensure that edits are carried out based on your local knowledge, whereas with OpenStreetMap you can just go make the changes that need to be made. It's been very satisfying for me to go contribute to OpenStreetMap when I see that paths are added or changed, so that the map reflects reality. Meanwhile Google Maps won't even move an entire park that is in the wrong place.
I can edit my street as a dead end to lower bar traffic, cool!
You’d still get plenty of traffic from Google Maps, etc.—it would only be the cool people who stopped using your street.
People do check this stuff for vandalism.
Maps have been around for thousands of years and have always been unreliable. You'd think the legal principles involved would be well explored by now.
Citations Needed podcast did an episode about "frivolous" lawsuits where they talked about the McD coffee lawsuit too: https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-107-pop-torts-and-the-ready-made-virality-of-frivolous-lawsuit-stories
It's great that people are getting educated on things like this.
Legal Eagle also did a similar episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_jaU5V9FUg
What did bid media told public about got coffee lawsuit?
It's commonly used as an example of a frivolous lawsuit, because everyone knows coffee is hot right? Of course coffee can burn you.
The issue is that this particular coffee was negligently hot, so hot that the victim had third-degree burns on her privates. Also, the victim originally only sought coverage for medical expenses, but instead McD went to court and had to pay out a much larger amount.
Anyone who thinks this lawsuit was frivolous, try to find some of the pictures of her burns.
The media reporting was that is was frivolous, someone burned themselves on coffee and wanted to blame McDonald’s. That wasn’t the full story.
IIRC the narrative and the headline was “duh ! Hot coffee is hot! Idiot! “. ……But it turned out something like, McD coffee was like 99 degrees versus 70 degrees for your average cup and it was decided that makes a difference.
You’d have to check that, but that’s what I remember .
IMHO you still handle a hot drink like it could scald you , that’s your responsibility and your taught that from like 5 years old . However, you wouldn’t expect to be handed pretty much boiling water in a plastic cup .
Well it was super super hot, like you said. It was handed off to some grandma, the lid popped off, and the super hot coffee spilled all over this very old woman's inner thighs. There were pictures.
Old people have notoriously thin skin. Literally. So this hot-ass coffee burns this old woman's thin skin, and I think the resulting burns needed to be fixed via hospital visits & maybe surgery. So yeah it wasn't a frivolous lawsuit.