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Wrecking Crew Demolishes Wrong Housing Duplex Following Google Maps Error (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A demolition company has leveled the wrong housing duplex after one of its employees was misled by a Google Maps error. Instead of bringing down a house destroyed by a tornado in Rowlett, Texas at 7601 Cousteau Drive, the wrecking crew demolished another home at 7601 and 7603 Calypso Drive, a block away. Owners of the second house were waiting for their house to be repaired, since it didn't suffer major damages in the tornado. The demolition company's CEO dismissed the incident as "not a big deal." The wrecking crew used Google Maps to find the house to demolish because they were brought in from a neighboring town, but failed to double-check with a neighbor before starting their work. A Google engineer confirmed that Google Maps was showing the wrong information.
"All information contained with Google Maps is provided for Entertainment purposes only and should not be relied upon for complete accuracy, up to and including: GPS guidance for self-guided weapons systems, Pizza Delivery, and House Demolition."
stranger than fiction. Except for the Google part.
How did they plan demolishing of buildings before Google Maps?
Seems like you should be using official zoning maps from the city for something like this...
How hard would it be to go to the nearest intersection and make sure you're on the right street, and double check the street address?
I think the (former) homeowners should get to stay in "not a big deal"'s house until new houses are built. "Not a big deal" can live in a tent on the construction site.
and they demolished the neighbors.
It wasn't a Google Maps error, it was a "failure to identify the address error" by the crew. When you're doing something as destructive as tearing down a house, take a look at the street sign and make sure it matches the address on the work order. Don't blindly follow your GPS.
Obligatory GPS scene from "The Office":
https://youtu.be/n5lbShWEGQ0
Both the houses were white with shingle roofs.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Apple Maps shows only the single (correct) location. How many more people will rely on the inherently flawed Google Maps before they figure out it's the most error prone of modern options?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does Rowlett, Tx not have street signs? Google maps is but a back story, up front is the incompentence of the crew and/or company procedures...Checking with a "neighbor" is their backup?
This is not the first time this has happened.
I think by law, that whenever this happens, the company 's owner should have their house destroyed - along with all of their personal photos, keepsakes and see if they think it is a big deal.
Basic rule should be an estimate value of the house x 3 - if they don't sue. x 6 if you have to sue. Because emotional losses are far bigger than the physical ones.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"Trust, but verify." The same thing could be said about Google Maps.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
what next?
using wikipedia to learn about economic and military condition of a country and its historical and cultural background, before invading? or to write academic papers that goes in to those decisions by people who used wikipedia to pass examinations?
using twitter to allocate and channel emergency resources during emergency?
etc etc
would be funny if these things are not already happening.
using a restricted (formal, as in twitter with its "trust & safety council" censorship, or informal as in language cultural, and Internet penetration, barriers in wikipedia and twitter ) sources to make decisions will always end badly.
cut twice!
I'll get modded down for this, but remember this is the same technology that's supposed to be giving us self-driving cars within the next five years.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Having worked with Real Maps when that was the Normal way to find a place and now see the glitches in not only Google Maps, Apple Map but also GPS being off also don't jump to blame anyone except those the did the tear down. Business Owners Problem. Hope they have Good Insurance.
"we have insurance to cover the fuck ups our crew does all the time. and those people will never get their stuff back..."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In his version that he observed, the locals who sit in the pub and drink all day got a contract. They went out to tear down a porch after having one more drink. They came back to his pub shaking and needing another drink talking about tearing down the wrong porch. All I can think is that his neighbor will be complaining about the guys who didn't tear down his and asking who his neighbor got to tear down his.
God spoke to me
From TFS: "The demolition company's CEO dismissed the incident as 'not a big deal.'" In what sense is tearing down the wrong house not a big deal?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You think contractors demoing the wrong house is bad? There's been many cases where people have gone in for surgery and they've removed or operated on the wrong limb!! Crazy!
I work at a place that distributes medical supplies and one of the things we sell is 'skin markers', just small markers to write things like "THIS ARM" on patients before operations. It was such a problem that they actually had to come up with a solution for it to stop happening!
Bwahahahaah you're kidding, right? Apple Maps couldn't find its own ass with two hands and its own maps.
Because it was a Google Maps error, not an Apple Maps error.
A couple years back the wife and I were driving in NV, from Topaz Lake to Hawthorne, over a very dirt-track-across-the-desert, scraped every couple years (but still an official state route), road.
As we approached Hawthorne, going through a pass in a range of hills, the nav system told us to turn left about a mile early and take a little road that went a couple car lengths and then off a cliff, maybe a couple hundred feet high.
Seems there had been an old road there, back in the pony-express days, which had gone away nn a landslide long ago. We're guessing the USGS still showed it, the map company had included it in their database, and the nav system had computed it could save us a couple tenths of a mile by taking the shortcut.
Fortunately we are aware of such pathologies, especially in remote areas, and were on the alert for it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
http://dilbert.com/strip/1989-...
Summation 2
Apple Maps has improved considerably since introduction. I find it quite usable now, at least where I go. You're probably talking about when they introduced it, apparently having decided that geographical information systems really couldn't be that hard.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Whoever modded this up must be a time traveller from the year 2010z
but it's definitely NOT Google's fault for the wrong house being demolished.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/help/terms_maps.html
Not a Big Deal news item
Doesn't actually show him saying it, unfortunately.
How did the wrecking crew do anything?!?
Isn't Tommy Tedesco dead?
Yes, it has gone from fucking abysmal to just abysmal.
A company has done something dumb to you. Would you rather:
1) complain to the press so everyone knows that the company makes mistakes
2) refrain from talking to the press and then negotiate a large $ settlement with which to fix the actual problem
You are the CEO of a company that did something dumb, should you:
1) comment to the press that this is not an extraordinary situation because you have a process in place to respond to this kind of request in due course, so that people will be impressed with how well you carry out your duties as an industrial robot
2) make a nice statement about how this has never happened before; you work with people like this every day whose problems you are helping to solve, and it's terrible that you have created a problem instead of solving one, but you are working with your insurer to try to get the people a settlement that will fully compensate them for their loss, so that people will be impressed with how great it is that 1 out of 1 companies they know in ${your_industry} are run by such an awesome person
The article said the house was waiting for repairs. It's very possible it had a building permit that looked like a demo permit and the workers didn't bother reading it.
When you are destroying a house, you should read the thing.
As it is, best case is they get sued for negligence and their insurance company will pay a few hundred thousand bucks to the homeowner's insurance company. Google will also probably take a hard look at their google maps TOS and make sure that there's are an ironclad consequential damages waiver and a solid indemnity provision in there.
If not, I feel bad for anyone using a self-driving car in the area...
At least their transit system information is hands down better than anyone else's. It completely knocks the socks off Google's transit data.
A company has done something dumb to you. Would you rather:
1) complain to the press so everyone knows that the company makes mistakes
2) refrain from talking to the press and then negotiate a large $ settlement with which to fix the actual problem
You are the CEO of a company that did something dumb, should you:
1) comment to the press that this is not an extraordinary situation because you have a process in place to respond to this kind of request in due course, so that people will be impressed with how well you carry out your duties as an industrial robot
2) make a nice statement about how this has never happened before; you work with people like this every day whose problems you are helping to solve, and it's terrible that you have created a problem instead of solving one, but you are working with your insurer to try to get the people a settlement that will fully compensate them for their loss, so that people will be impressed with how great it is that 1 out of 1 companies they know in ${your_industry} are run by such an awesome person
Hmm. I'll take choice 1 on the first part so that choice 2 is more likely to happen on the company's behalf.
THEN if choice 2 doesn't occur, we move on to choice 3. Watch as company does everything it can to recover from terrible public relations faux pas AND get the large settlement.
Google is in the home wrecking business?
I would have like to read:
Crew tries to demolish wrong house, wake up sleeping homeowner who teaches them about the Second Amendment.
It was Texas, right?
Did no one notice the sign posts at the intersection of the street as they turned on to it? Seems to me like it was a pretty easy thing to check...
I'm sure it does, in the five cities they bothered implementing it for. The last time I tried to use Apple Maps (a month ago, maybe?) it tried to send me the wrong way down a one way street then when I didn't do that told me to turn right off an overpass.
Waverly place, in NYC's "village", crosses itself.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Come on, it's 2016 already. GPS receivers are now cheap and common. So there is no good reason the precise latitude and longitude shouldn't be legally required on the paperwork in addition to the street address. And the crew shouldn't proceed if there is an unexplained discrepancy with any of the information.
More like
having decided that OMG, Google isn't going to do their maps app for us any more we better get something together quick
'The demolition company's CEO dismissed the incident as "not a big deal."'
I sincerely hope the victims of this piece of irresponsible incompetence sue his company into bankruptcy. Of all the utterly unprofessional, lazy, useless things to do...
Municipal authorities should also be sure to blacklist this man and any companies he is associated with so that he has no further opportunity to wreak havoc.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
... is that they got a response from google at all - something generally impossible for ordinary isers, no matter how big a problem with google algorithms and data.
This overreliance on algorithms and data (e.g. decisions without human oversight and intervention) makes me really worry about their many meatspace endevours - case in point, self-driving cars. The next 'error in data' or algorithm mistake may cost you your life.
Seriously, expect the google maps TOS to get an update over this.
Do you have ESP?
Fuck the town planners, too.
Do you REALLY need houses close to each other with matching house numbers IN THE THOUSANDS and similar street names? Fuck that.
I live in a small subdivision at 2004 WOO******** and less than 1/4 mile away is ANOTHER house at 2004 WOO********, and less than 1/4 mile away in the other direction is another 2004. We get each other's mail ALL THE FUCKING TIME. What kind of FUCKING RETARDED DIPSHIT thinks that's a good way to lay out streets and house numbers? It's bad enough losing my mail because of that; I'd want to kill someone if I lost my HOUSE because of that shit. There are hundreds of houses with numbers in the thousands. There is NO REASON that any two houses in the ENTIRE SUBDIVISION should have the same numbers.
Also, what is the fetish with large numbers? There is a court next to me with 7 houses and the house numbers are in the 11,000's. Why?!? I grew up in house #105. Friend at 21 on another street, girlfriend at 56, and another friend at 189. Elementary school was 44. What's the point of large numbers if you're not going to at least take advantage of the benefits they give, i.e. uniqueness?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Let me guess... Google is at fault because they have more money?
with that?
all I wanted was to Google in peace, all you ever did was break me.