http://thegoat.backcountry.com/2009/10/27/are-personal-locator-beacons-yuppie-911-yes-afraid-so/I would expect recovery insurance policies to subsequently put in
provisions to avoid this mis-use of the devices.
Sent to you by Roleigh Martin via Google Reader: Are Personal Locator
Beacons Yuppie 911? Yes, Afraid so. via Backcountry.com: The Goat by
rockythompson on 10/27/09
Why bother learning to read a map when you have GPS? No, really. My
cartography skills have gone to hell. At least my vocabulary skills are
tite. Cartography.
Cheap, transportable technology like GPS and Personal Locator Beacons
is giving people the confidence to go places they probably shouldn’t.
“Now you can go into the back country and take a risk you might not
normally have taken,” says Matt Scharper, who coordinates a rescue
every day in a state with wilderness so rugged even crashed planes can
take decades to find. “With the Yuppie 911, you send a message to a
satellite and the government pulls your butt out of something you
shouldn’t have been in in the first place.”
The bad news for people who resist calling 911 when all their ice melts
is that abuse of the system might make it unavailable when it’s
actually needed. If SPOT and all these PLBs continue to get cheaper and
people keep setting them off when they think their water it too salty
(true story), there will be an eventual adjustment to the appropriate
response.
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