Tragedy in the Midst of Technology

I’m not sure if you’ve heard the news or not about James Kim and his family that were stranded on a secluded road in the Pacific Northwest. James Kim was a senior editor for CNET and was on a vacation with his family over the Thanksgiving holidays.

It seems as if the family’s car had gotten stuck in the snow and mud and they were unable to free themselves. The family, consisting of James, his wife and two daughters, ran the car’s heater as long as they could to stay warm until they ran out of gas. They then began burning the tires to keep warm.

James eventually went off on his own into the snow covered forests to try and find help for his family. His family was finally found by search crews and were alive and well. James Kim’s body was found a few days later.

It’s a tragedy to me that this type of event could take place with all the technology at our fingertips. We can only assume that cell phones were out of range and there was nobody anywhere near the area to hear them if they screamed or were honking the horn to the car. Burning car tires, you’d think the thick black smoke would have raised attention too.

There are plenty of little devices that do exist that backpackers, climbers and explorers take with them to use in an emergency. How many of us would have thought to purchase or take with us such items for a simple family vacation.

What kinds of things can we do to improve this situation? Homing beacons put in all cars as an emergency device? What do we do about late model cars? Personal tracking devices? We’ll upset privacy advocates. Cell phones with emergency battery back-up enough to make an emergency signal burst with a SOS message?

What do we do to make sure this never happens again?

Source: Searchers Find Body Of Missing SF Man