[xzsinu]

At some level, Google puts these expectations on itself. Features like live traffic updates, road closures and breaking news highlighted on the map tell the average user that they are a reliable source of up-to-date information about something as safety critical as the state of the roads. They use this perception to build market advantage. You can't do that and simultaneously blame the end user for not compensating for being misled, and it looks especially bad when the end user trusted you and died. If every route calculation was forced to directly tell the user "this is not a reliable source of information about your route, please use precaution," that would be a win. But Google probably wouldn't like being forced to call themselves out like that.

[3seashells]

And they can track vehicles. A graph node on which for mine years no human has gotten from a to b should be algorithmically flagged as unusable.

[sfn42]

At best it would have to be flagged for review, at which point someone would have to check it somehow. Otherwise you'd end up deleting a bunch of totally fine roads that simply aren't frequently used by people who send their locations to Google.

[3seashells]

9 years not used once is not infrequently

[sfn42]

You seem confused. A road can be used by people who aren't sending their location to Google.

I would also be surprised if every single road in the world has seen usage in the past decade. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of roads that just aren't ever used any more. Doesn't mean they won't be useful in the future. Doesn't mean they should be removed from maps.

Implementing your suggested algorithm would probably make the map less accurate, not more accurate.

[3seashells]

In many countries there is mandatory road service by the state or logging companies.. And by now everyone has phones. Every road use able is used, if not by normal traffic, then by tourists, hunters, smugglers. The fear is that the obvious omnipresent surveillance of the panopticon and previeous accidents could open up surveillance companies to lawsuits. Cause they could have known..

Can not have surveillance capitalism without the liability.. Have your cake and eat it. The family is right to sue apple and Google.. If you saw, and you could have known, being a beeping Tom as buisness model makes you liable.