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Google Maps Directions That Killed People

Farrell McGuire | August 5, 2026



Google maps has directed millions of motorists on the road in just about every corner of the world you can think of. While the vast majority of drivers make it to their destination unharmed… some don’t. Today we talk about a few of these tragic cases.

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Written by Farrell McGuire

Comments

This post currently has 32 comments.

  1. @1980rlquinn

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    I'm surprised none of the stories that made it to this video were from Japan.

    For a long time, Google had a contract with Japanese map-maker Zenrin, and their maps of the country were solid and well-updated. I'm not sure why (usually money in such cases), but Google cancelled their contract with Zenrin and started mapping Japan for themselves. For a good six months after the contract ended, Google was nigh unusable in Japan, with directions sending you off cliffs and into mountainsides.

    It's better now, as it's at least usable in the major cities, but there are still serious errors on the platform.

  2. @mrfox-v7i

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    In Latvia while I was exploring some wooded roads on a bike I decided to go on some road. The road then ended on a dead end with just trees and stuff in front of me, nothing was indicative that there was a road. BUT GOOGLE MAPS SHOWED A ROAD THERE. Just straight through the woods. Like what

  3. @KellyandKennedy

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    I am almost 43 and I assure you that MapQuest was never a novelty as far as the believability of the directions. You 100% believed the directions were accurate just like you do nowadays when you put it into your phone. How long Google Maps I find places that my GPS is telling me to drive on and that I can't. But MapQuest was amazing back in the day. I absolutely went on cross state for several state trips using them. I live in Michigan and my dad lived in Florida so we would travel to see him. But I assure you it was never a novelty in believability. I would say 98% of the time you did not have any issues with the directions

  4. @pantitapalittapongarnpim1581

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    In Thailand we don't have shooting incident due to Google Map (yet), but people have driven into canals in the night. It's most likely because Google had put them on a motorcycle-only paths by those canals. A lot of delivery drivers in my area also told me they were directed to non-existing road on the way to my house which I later found was drawn on a canal. I've submitted the issue to Google, and I think it got fixed, but I've never heard anything back from them.

  5. @Erickson69

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    As much as dislike Google, it’s crazy trying to put blame on their maps for these deaths, you literally start every story with every person being warned multiple times before going on their trip. How the fuck do you go on a trip to fucking Siberia in summer clothes gtfo

  6. @SnapshotOfASoul

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    Google Maps is the reason that so many people get hit by cars while walking along my road, because it shows as a slightly faster thru-road between two cities, versus the more well-constructed official road. It has no shoulder, just a tiny patch of dirt before a ditch, on either side. It's two lanes and NOT designed for this, but is constantly horrifically busy because it's deemed "that much faster." Meanwhile the actual Trans-Canada passes by a few blocks over and is much better supplied, but instead, we get to hear the ambulance and cops every few nights as someone else gets hit or ends up in the ditch. It's semi-rural, not even plumbed to a sewer out here, so the municipality doesn't really care at all what happens to us. We're ripe to be plowed over and made into fancy McMansions for all they care.

  7. @rebellareriote

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    when i was visiting my dad in florida googlemaps tried to make the uber driver turn down what was obviously a private driveway that wasnt even going in the right direction to get to my dad's house. the driveway had a huge iron gate so i'm guessing that was a thing that kept happening to them lmfao

  8. @sapphiresuicune6787

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    Google should fix these issues, but those in Brazil and Pakistan fall much more on the governments and cultures of those countries. I'm blessed to live in a country where people don't do that crap as much.

  9. @Living_Dead_Girrl

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    FYI most of Google's developers are now based in India, ever since Sundar Pichai took over as CEO of Alphabet, Inc. (aka Google). Just a reminder he was promoted from CEO of YT, after all these platform changes were made forcing us to self-censor like children to this very day. What a great guy… Even donated to Trump. Don't believe me? Try Gemini, then wait til random Hindi gets inserted into responses because they program in Hindi. It's not hard to find sources that show almost all app development for Google and Android has been moved to India, and we wonder why apps are breaking and never getting fixed.

    This was their "solution" in response to Google engineers and developers in Mountain View, CA doing walk outs and protests over Google taking contracts to censor Google Search for Chinese users and work with the Pentagon on bad stuff… It worked and these programs were thwarted and now Google's banned in China while Apple singlehandedly made them such a powerful and polluting country, Google didn't want anyone to have that kind of power again over their corporate decisions and thus slowly got rid of each OG engineer over the years… And now they're almost completely out of North America.

    I don't blame India nor believe Indian developers are any less brilliant and hardworking, however, they're less likely to push back against Google's bad ideas and have less context for the work they do, no liability, and little personal attachment to the repercussions caused by mistakes with the programming and software. Notice how nothing bad on Google Maps happened in India… But something very bad happened to Pakistanis, when India and Pakistan have notoriously bad relations to put it mildly? Also, how Google Maps suddenly got bad when Sundar became CEO?

  10. @dhlovesims

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    Google once led me to a wooden area. It must of rained the day before. There was a dirt road and it end abruptly. I also didn't have data. My car tire got stuck in mud but luckily I knew to find something to but behind my before trying to back out.

  11. @CassieRage3339

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    "Google didn't do anything about it though" Well right because all of the complaints are handled by robots.
    All of the people have been "laid off" ( basically let go/fired ) except for the layers upon layers of lazy middle-management who do nothing but pay for outsourced machine learning models to do all the work for them.

    If there were REAL humans doing REAL jobs behind these services, someone would have actually probably done something about that bridge path.

  12. @AidenRKrone

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    Paper maps from the 1950s–1970s (and earlier, of course) can actually be quite collectible, especially if they show roads and highways that don't exist or aren't used anymore, doubly so if the routes are instantly recognizable because they hold cultural significance, like Route 66. Although they're an obsolete form of navigation, it's cool to browse through and collect them. I have a few of them that show routes that predate the contemporaneous road networks in my area of Ohio.

  13. @uggoloser

    August 5, 2026 at 10:02 am

    I just preordered the map book for my city, the same one I used to use before Google maps. I'm sick of being reliant on whatever the Google algorithm thinks is the best way. I'm going to start brainmaxxing my spatial awareness again.

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