
Google Maps shows sunken car where missing man’s body was found - michalu
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49677843
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justinlink
[desktop link]
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moon+Bay+Cir,+Wellington,+...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moon+Bay+Cir,+Wellington,+FL+33414/@26.6250045,-80.2276265,36m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x88d92598b56f512d:0x1674a1e0c3779780!8m2!3d26.6262507!4d-80.2265756)

[mobile]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@26.6249928,-80.227623,23m/data=...](https://www.google.com/maps/@26.6249928,-80.227623,23m/data=!3m1!1e3)

\-- thanks to comment below for mobile link.

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graffitici
I still don't see it! Which part of the pond is it?

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jandrese
Top left. For some reason the current image on Google Maps seems to be lower
resolution than the screenshot posted to the BBC.

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mongol
I think different people actually get different images om Google maps..

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wtallis
Google has two sets of base images. I usually prefer the plain 2D images, but
you can get their reconstructed/interpolated 3D view with false color by
toggling the "Globe" option in Google Maps, or the "3D Buildings" option in
Google Earth. At this particular location, the 3D view has higher resolution.

~~~
jandrese
Yeah, enabling 3D view makes the car plain as day, even on Firefox.

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flyGuyOnTheSly
Nevermind it being visible on google maps since 2007...

Imagine being the homeowner who had no idea a corpse was decomposing steps
from his own backyard for the past 22 years... or that a car was in the pond
behind your house.

People really need to get out more often.

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subpixel
Nobody wanders around the gator and snake infested pond behind their Florida
house.

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skrebbel
I don't know anything about Florida. Why would developers choose to build
suburbs with ponds in areas like that?

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gruez
imagine the smell and mosquitoes

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driverdan
Most ponds don't smell.

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seanmcdirmid
Does the water drain, evaporate, or just stagnate?

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aazaa
> "Amazingly, a vehicle had plainly [been] visible on a Google Earth satellite
> photo of the area since 2007, but apparently no-one had noticed it until
> 2019," according to the report.

This sounds like a job for machine learning. Are there any systematic efforts
underway to use Google Earth to search for out-of-place objects?

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leni536
And of course for that you need some training data.

[https://imgur.com/3jYKQ6r](https://imgur.com/3jYKQ6r)

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skinnymuch
Wow that was very good! Thanks for that!

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GistNoesis
Last month, I noticed there was a sign not well fixed over the road. So when I
arrived home, I reported it to the appropriate authorities through a web
interface. And doing so, to pinpoint it for the repair guys, I noticed that
the precise sign was available to be seen via street-view. I was even able
using the time-travel feature to notice that it has been dangling for more
than two years.

Probably running anomaly detection on all road-signs all over the world, you
could prevent a certain number of accident each year.

The deeper question behind this, is what should have been done by those who
have the info and didn't act ? Once you start running anomaly detection on
data how do you navigate the ethical minefield that ensue.

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flyGuyOnTheSly
>Once you start running anomaly detection on data how do you navigate the
ethical minefield that ensue.

Where's the minefield?

Just release it all publicly, and offer municipalities private services if
they want you to really have a go at their signs.

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GistNoesis
Well depending on the pricing of the API there are plenty of low revenue
services that can't be run profitably.

So depending on the pricing of the API, you let accidents happen. Or even
worse, depending on whether or not the municipality is rich enough to buy your
services you let them happen or not (even though the poorer the city the more
likely it is that they already have maintenance issues).

There are plenty other things you may notice on street-view, like
dangerous/illegal behaviors, pot-holes, even finding cars in lake can have an
impact of property value.

Reporting anything is probably a legal or PR risk because of the unknown
ramifications so you end-up doing nothing and the accidents happens, yet no-
one can hope to offer a better service because it doesn't make economical
sense because of the existing service tailored to another usage of the data.

That's not an easy problem but that's one which is at the heart of all-data
related business. For example, when you have access to plenty of face pictures
with flash you may notice some medical issues with eyes, obviously this is a
valuable information for the health insurer, and also to the user.

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goda90
>Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office told the BBC that Mr Moldt is presumed to
have lost control of his vehicle and driven into the pond.

>The force said that, during the initial investigation into his disappearance,
there was "no evidence of that occurring" until recently, when a shift in the
water made the car visible.

I'm surprised that no one saw signs of a car going off the road back when he
went missing. In the image the car is quite far from the road suggesting a lot
of momentum as it went into the pond.

~~~
scintill76
[http://charleyproject.org/case/william-earl-
moldt](http://charleyproject.org/case/william-earl-moldt) says it was under
construction at the time. Maybe nobody lived there.

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mikey_p
This same story has happened before, in Michigan, when a worker putting
christmas lights on a nearby tree noticed a car in a pond from their raised
vantage point.

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/car-with-body-of-man-
missing-...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/car-with-body-of-man-
missing-9-years-visible-on-google-maps_n_5645f5e4e4b045bf3deead62)

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emmelaich
Note that it wasn't _found_ with Google maps, it's just that you can see it.

From the article ..

> *it was a neighbour who reported the sunken car and was not aware of reports
> that Google Maps had been used."

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dwighttk
>[Police spokeswoman] Barbera said it was a neighbour[sic] who reported the
sunken car and was not aware of reports that Google Maps had been used.

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ndidi
sic? it's spelled neighbour in British English

Yeah, I know you are just baiting me.

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scarmig
I wonder how hard it would be to scan ingested maps for interesting submerged
structures, and also roughly how many cars would turn up if it's feasible. I'd
guess... O(100)?

~~~
TravHatesMe
Interesting thought but uneducated guess.

I bet IR scans could help, similar to how they are discovering ancient cities
buried deep in the jungle.

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themodelplumber
Space-based radar is also available which provides views of metal content as
an intelligence product. Brighter parts of the image = more metal. I'm not
sure if it's commercially available but it would sure help to find cars in
shallow water...

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7952
There is a lot of other metal in shallow water though. Just think about
rubbish, buoys, marker posts for utilities, boats, sewer outfalls, gratings
etc.

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droithomme
I've found and reported obviously problematic submerged items on Google Maps
on a few occasions. No one is interested. Now I just share them with my
friends.

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libraryatnight
you should post them on a blog or make a subreddit or something. This comment
section would seem to indicate people love looking at weird stuff on Google
Maps.

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dwighttk
also visible in Apple Maps. Definitely in 3D, but only just in 2D. I.e. in 2D
at maximum zoom there is a light spot where the car was. 3D lets you zoom in
closer, and you can see the rear end of a car even more clearly than the
picture in the article.

3D:
[https://www.ianitor.com/img/3dcar.png](https://www.ianitor.com/img/3dcar.png)
2D:
[https://www.ianitor.com/img/2dcar.png](https://www.ianitor.com/img/2dcar.png)

~~~
dwighttk
If you go to
[https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer](https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer)
[1] their resolution isn't great (can't see the car), but you can see that in
1999 (~2 years after his disappearance) they were still building houses
there... ~2 years before (1995) that area was orchards or farmland.

[1]I used 3789 Moon Bay Cir Wellington, FL 33414 United States

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_maverick_
I wonder how many other cases like this can be solved with an image
recognition based AI scraping the rest of Google Maps out there.. anyone on
here interested in collab on that?

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TaylorAlexander
I suppose it would need more context than just image recognition. There may be
lots of sunken cars with no bodies or no unsolved case.

~~~
_maverick_
You could just send an automated email to the local police departments based
off of sunken car ZIP code from long/lat data. And let them decide.

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werber
I wonder if they could could programmatically scan all bodies of water for
submerged vehicles

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furyofantares
Captcha of the future: Which of these photos contains the answer to an
unsolved mystery?

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epigramx
Let alone Cthulhu is on a pond
[https://i.imgur.com/CbgqpkF.png](https://i.imgur.com/CbgqpkF.png)

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ptaipale
OT, but looking at this neighbourhood, it's not surprising that there's
trouble when a hurricane comes.

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sjukfan
I thought the whole idea of Pokémon go was for people to go check map oddities
like that?

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georgedotin
This is unbelievable.

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rdiddly
So if a _whole car_ can stay hidden for 22 years, that tells me that in those
22 years, nobody swam or fished nearby. The aerial photo makes it obvious the
whole subdivision is intercut with ponds that are obviously man-made, and they
look stagnant, nasty & sad. Probably also full of pesticide & herbicide
runoff(t). Everybody in the subdivision probably tells their kids to stay out
of the ponds. "That's what the pool is for honey! Ponds are for poor people!"
I wish Kate Wagner (mcmansionhell.com) was here.

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justinlink
It's Florida though. It's more of a swamp than a pond.

Very likely it does not have fish, but might have snakes and the occasional
alligator.

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KingMachiavelli
I'm very curious why anyone would want a mosquito invested swamp/pond in their
back yard. I guess it must be a Florida thing.

~~~
undersuit
Flood control.

[https://www.waterfrontcleanup.com/blog/why-storm-water-
reten...](https://www.waterfrontcleanup.com/blog/why-storm-water-retention-
ponds-are-so-important-in-florida.html)

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pleatedwaffle
Now if only it could start giving me directions without having to click on 7
different buttons.

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mav3rick
Did this in 3 clicks without assistant or home saved.

