Tech companies ignore pleas on rail safety

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The National Transportation Safety Board asked Google, Apple and Microsoft in 2016 to add railroad crossings to their navigation apps. But they haven't.

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the likelihood of crashes,” the NTSB wrote to the leaders of the 14 organizations, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella. Last year, 270 people died in accidents at railroad crossings in the U.S., just one fewer than in 2017, which itself was the deadliest year at crossings in more than a decade.

Daniel Stevens, the head of the watchdog group Campaign for Accountability, who has been monitoring Google closely for his organization’s Google Transparency Project, said the failure to act fits a pattern at the company. “Our product teams carefully consider new safety features in the context of the holistic product experience and, in that way, seek to avoid evaluating individual features in isolation that could lead to overcrowding and create a sub-optimal experience for users," wrote the then-head of Google’s D.C. office, former Republican Rep. Susan Molinari.

 

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Why do we continue to assign the onus of personal responsibilities & safety to entities w/o interest? Soda & Fast food=fat; TV=dumb; “Maps” make us crash. Don’t buy it; turn it off; look up from your phone. Educate urself-never rely on another for anything. Life 101 people. 🤷🏽‍♂️

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