New York — Google’s navigation services today fessed-up to an interesting situation that has recently made some interesting news headlines. Apparently, the driver of one of its Street View van, which was scouting the area collecting pictures, accidentally ran over a deer somewhere near Rush, New York, and the pictures were added to Google Maps. But shortly thereafter, Google has blacked out the image that showed the van running down a baby deer.
The pictures have been captured by several news blogs before Google deleted the image.
The images, which have since been blacked out from Street View, showed a blurred baby deer clearly standing in one picture, and then another clip displays as you moved forward, the deer was on the ground, lying dead on the side of the road with the shadow of the Google car clearly outlined.
Gizmodo reports, “As you track the street view scene down Five Points Road in Rush, NY, you can clearly notice the deer run out in front of the car, get hit and then see it on the side of the road before the car pulls over. And that is the end of the Street View data for Five Points Road.”
Google went on to explain how the ordeal played out:
“The driver was reasonably upset, and immediately 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.”
Anyway, looking at the pictures of the scene, it is clear that deer wandered in front of the Google Maps van at just the wrong moment. And, either way, it is hard not to feel sorry for the deer. More pictures can be seen here.