Google Maps may no longer direct users around dangerous areas in South Africa despite announcing it would do so.
In November 2023, the ex-Country Director for Google South Africa, Alistair Mokoena, said that the search engine’s navigation app would start guiding users around the township of Nyanga in the Western Cape following a spate of violent attacks that left several tourists severely injured.
At the time, Mokoena noted that this initiative was part of an agreement between Google and the Department of Tourism that sought to “promote South Africa as a safe tourist destination.”
He said Google would start looking at avoiding certain areas if they had been deemed known crime hotspots by the authorities, regardless of where they were located.
In total, there were approximately 58 areas around the country that were classified as crime hotspots that Mokoena said Google Maps may look at avoiding in the future.
“We’ve been working with the engineering team to ensure that the routes that we do surface, if not the most direct or the most convenient or the quickest, we need to think about is there a danger element, and if the authorities deemed there is and they communicated as such, we take the lead from there,” he said at the time.
“Our responsibility to society is to help people avoid danger, and if we can do it by recommending three routes instead of two routes, we will do that.”
However, the internet conglomerate has since changed its tune, arguing in a court case in the United States (US) that it is not responsible for the safety of its users.
Avoiding crime hotspots
Following their return to the US in January, two Google Maps users who were victims of a gang in Nyanga initiated a legal challenge against Google for negligence, News24 reported.
While Google was confident that the case would be thrown out of court similar to previous lawsuits it faced in the past, the company’s decision to reroute users around Nyanga provided unique circumstances that gave merit to the couple’s argument.
The victims contend that Google’s commitment to avoid known crime hotspots in South Africa is tantamount to an admission of responsibility to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm against its users.
Additionally, they believe that Google had been made aware of a high risk of crime in the Nyanga area by domestic and US authorities, but still chose to take Maps users through the township despite several alternative routes being available.
In rebuttal, Google filed court papers arguing that the case should be dismissed as there was no legal footing on which the onus for the attacks could be ascribed to Google.
It said the responsibility for the attacks lay with the assailants, not Google.
Furthermore, the company said if it were to implement a system where all high-crime zones were to be sidestepped, it would effectively have to redline certain areas completely.
The courts were scheduled to decide whether the case would be continued or thrown out in May, however, the plaintiffs went back to the drawing board to adjust several technical aspects of their application before it was presented to a judge again.
The case is now planned to continue in November.
TopAuto reached out to Google South Africa to query the status of the legal battle and whether it would continue to avoid crime hotspots in South Africa.
After first stating that it would provide feedback to our questions by the given deadline, the company later turned around and said it “will not be providing comment as this is still an ongoing case.”
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