Google Street View car claims first victim

[dhilipkumar]

Google Street View car claims first victim

Gathering ground-level images for Google Inc.'s voyeuristic Street View application, one of the search giant's mobile camera cars hit and killed a baby deer while snapping on a rural road in upstate New York.

The incident was recorded on Google Maps, but has since been blacked out by Google.

A sorry Google commented: "Gathering the imagery for Street View requires quite a bit of driving; as such, we take safety very seriously. Unfortunately, accidents do happen -- as some people have noticed, one of our Street View cars hit a deer while driving on a rural road in upstate New York. Due to several user requests using the 'Report a concern' tool, these images are no longer available in Street View.

"The driver was understandably upset, and promptly stopped to alert the local police and the Street View team at Google. The deer was able to move and had left the area by the time the police arrived. The police explained to our driver that, sadly, this was not an uncommon occurrence in the region -- the New York State Department of Transportation estimates that 60,000-70,000 deer collisions happen per year in New York alone -- and no police report needed to be filed."