Random Horrible Accidents and Blunders Caused by Google Maps (18 items)

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  (#1) Google Maps Sends a Woman Walking Into Traffic

  In 2010, a Utah woman followed the somewhat dubious walking directions provided by Google Maps and walked directly onto a busy highway, where she was clipped by a passing vehicle. And of course she sued Google for upwards of $100,000. 
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  (#2) Driver Follows Directions Straight Off a Cliff

  According to police in Indiana, a driver was following his GPS too closely when he plunged his car off an abandoned bridge into a ravine, killing his wife. A representative for the Sheriff's Department said "The Cline Avenue bridge is marked with numerous barricades including orange barrels and cones, large wood signs stating ROAD CLOSED with orange striped markings. There are concrete barricades across the road to further indicate the road is closed." This sounds like the plot of a film noir, in which the man in question gets rid of his wife by staging an almost preposterous accident, but sadly the incident, apparently, is what it is—the man was simply watching the GPS monitor and not the road. 
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  (#3) Demolition Company Tears Down Wrong House

  This story has one lesson: when in doubt, blame Google Maps. In 2016, a demolition company in Texas went to a misidentified address that they found on Google Maps and completely destroyed a family's duplex.
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  (#4) Man Claims GPS Made Him Drive Like a Crazy Person

  A driver in the UK tried to get out of a bad driving rap after he claimed that his GPS told him to drive down a narrow road and through a fence, landing him on the precipice of a 100 foot drop. Sure it did. 
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  (#5) Student Crashes Car While Reading a Map

  In a story that we hear all too often, an 18-year-old driver in Houston was checking Google Maps on her phone when she lost control of a car and crashed into an 18 wheel vehicle, killing her. 
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  (#6) Google Maps Sends Mt. Rushmore Seeking Tourists the Wrong Way

  Since 2010, roadtripping tourists who are looking to snap a pic of their favorite national monument have been getting directed to "Mount Rushmore, South Dakota" rather than the national monument. This case of "mistaken identity" has become so commonplace that a woman who runs a camp in Mount Rushmore has put up a sign that says, "Your GPS is WRONG. This is NOT Mt. Rushmore."
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  (#7) Scottish Island Disappears

  As if the Scottish weren't maligned enough, in 2013 Google made one of the country's islands straight-up disappear. A representative for Google said, "We hope to have the map of Jura back to normal as soon as possible." OK!
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  (#8) Nicaragua Accidentally Invades Costa Rica

  In 2010, Nicaragua accidentally sent troops across the border of Costa Rica, tore down the country's flag, and raised their own—all because Google Maps accidentally listed the area as belonging to Nicaragua. The geopolicy analyst of Google Maps said, "“Cartography is a complex undertaking, and borders are always changing” which is the equivalent of saying: "Whoopsie!"
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  (#9) Google Maps Closes Every Walmart

  In 2016, a massive error on Google Maps listed every Walmart in America as "Permanently Closed." It's unclear if the app was hacked, or if Google Maps was just trying to send everyone to Target. 
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  (#10) The Worst Way to Get to The White House

  Because the world is a terrible place, someone made an edit to Google Maps that made it possible to search "N***** king" and be taken to the White House. A representative from Google said, "Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologize for any offense this may have caused." 
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  (#11) Family Farm Falls Victim to Digital Mapping

  For over a decade, the Vogelman family has been living in a nightmare world involving FBI agents, ambulances searching for suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for missing children, all because the original IP Mapping of the farm was wrong. 
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  (#12) Google Maps Loses Balboa Park

  Balboa Park in San Diego isn't the easiest place to find, and this is especially true if you try to find it with Google Maps. If you search for the park, you're sent directly to a series of random canyons. Maybe someone should at least put some slides in the canyon.
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  (#13) Google Maps Gives Hitler His Due

  Well this is embarrassing. In 2014, Google Maps accepted an edit to rename Theoder-Heuss Square in Berlin to “Adolf Hitler Platz.” The Google employee that okayed the edit didn't just accept the title as a nickname, he made it the actual name of the park. Obviously that didn't sit well with the German public, who don't whitewash their tarnished past, but would rather not be needlessly identified with Nazis either.
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  (#14) Hacker Uses Google Maps to Spy on Spies

  In 2014, a hacker exploited Google's rather laissez-faire attitude towards edits to record phone calls made by regular people to both the FBI and the Secret Service. ValleyWag writer Nitasha Tiku explains: "The callers that Seely recorded thought they were speaking directly to the government agencies because they looked up the telephone number on Google Maps. What they didn't know was that Seely had set up fake listings for the San Francisco FBI office and Secret Service in Washington, D.C., displaying numbers that went to a phone account he set up rather than the federal offices. After Seely's numbers received the calls, they were seamlessly forwarded to the real offices the callers were trying to reach, only now the audio of their conversations with real federal agents was being captured by Seely." The Secret Service caught on to him, although once they interrogated him, they heralded to him as a "hero." 
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  (#15) Google Maps Blows the Lid Off India's Secret Military Bases

  In their undying desire to take pictures of the entire world, Google managed to make some of India's defense installations, nuclear power plants, and other sensitive locations visible with nothing more than a few keystrokes.  A spokesperson for the Indian government said that the visibility "adversely undermines'' the country's security.  
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  (#16) Self Driving Car Gets Into Accident

  It had to happen at some point. In 2016 one of Google's self-driving, 3D-mapping cars smacked into a public bus moving at about 2 mph.Nothing was damaged, except Google's pride. 
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  (#17) Google Maps Labels Redditor's Home as 'Cult'

  A Redditor in Japan contacted Google in 2016 with a rather unique complaint: it seems that Maps lists his private residence with the name and contact details of a "religious group" about 100 meters from his property. He drops the more friendly term "religious group" a few lines down in his request: "While I can see the funny side of this, I am also a bit worried that for several years visitors looking for our house may have the impression that my family are members of this cult and living in their compound." Which raises the question: just what exactly is this cult up to that has the man so freaked?
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  (#18) Google Car Causes Crash

  In 2014, a Google Street View driver in Arkansas went the wrong way down a one way street, then he did a U-Turn and side swiped another car. The other motorist received minor injuries and said, "Something better come out of Google's pocket for this." Who thinks the Google driver was using Maps when he crashed?

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