SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Latest on couple who survived six days in a remote part of southern Utah (all times local):
5:10 p.m.
A Texas couple who narrowly survived after being stranded for six days on a desolate dirt road in southern Utah says they realized too late their GPS app was guiding them to the wrong spot.
KSL-TV reports that 78-year-old Helena Byler of Houston, Texas, said Friday that she sensed they were on the wrong road, but that her husband insisted on continuing.
“I told Gerry, ‘Sweetheart, this doesn’t sound right.’ And he said, ‘No it’s OK’ … He wanted to continue. See, us women know better,” she said, chuckling.
After popping a tire in their rental car and getting stuck, she says they realized the GPS app was leading them to Lake Powell trail, not the lake.
Helena Byler spoke at a hospital in St. George where her 76-year-old husband Gerald Byler is being treated in the neuro specialty rehabilitation unit.
They were found Oct. 2 by a rancher checking his cattle Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
GPS is not the navigational panacea that the advertisements would have you believe.
Article is a bit thin, but it appears she went for help and got lucky.
My policy is ‘stay with the vehicle’ but that’s because the vehicle is also where my gear is going to be. And…you need to have gear. A case of bottled water is less than $5 at WalMart.
Hard to believe this sort of ting happens in this age of tech and population density, but………
ETA: More detail
glad they made it out. hate to hear these stories and at that age it is a death sentence. lucky for certian.
I’d wager that when people say that their GPS led them astray they likely put in the wrong info, street instead of boulevard, that sort of thing.
Still, like you observed, GPS is not the navigational silver bullet people think it is.
Even tho it has the correct address, my phone insists we live 12 miles away. It was weird to get notices asking if I wanted info about the place we were “visiting” – home. I finally put a stop to that.
GPS doesn’t relieve us from the obligation to use our brains & have common sense. I rarely use it when I’m driving because it won’t tell me if I need to be in a certain lane to exit & it doesn’t know how many cars are on the road. It works out much better to check the route before leaving home.
The husband’s response to his wife’s suggestion that they were on the wrong road is very common – when we make mistakes we’re apt to double down & keep going. “Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)” is an excellent read on the subject.
I’m old school, map and a compass are in the car all the time, along with some bottled water.
My TOM TOM said to go right, just a little matter of a huge rock cliff being in the way.
Another time the GPS feature on my tracfone said to go left, it would have sent me onto oncoming traffic.
Map and Compass don’t lie.
Chris K.
We used to have GPS in one of our ambulances (till it was stolen) but we were not allowed to use it, it was mostly for making sure of the names of unmarked streets. But in the two services I work for, GPS is not allowed because of errors in GPS routing or street numbering. We only use map books. What does that tell you?