EMERY COUNTY, Utah (ABC4) — Over the past several years, Emery County has had a problem with drivers putting “Utah” into Google Maps and becoming stranded on East Mountain. After pressure following the worst incident yet, Google corrected the issue.
Emery County’s Sheriff Tyson Huntington said that several times per month, they receive a call for help — usually around midnight or later — coming from a remote road on East Mountain.
The Emery County Sheriff’s Office provided ABC4.com with information on nine cases from the past two years where travelers were stranded on East Mountain — either lost, stuck or out of gas — after their navigation system had directed them up the mountain road.
“We’ve had a problem with people traveling into Utah and they’ll put just ‘Utah’ into their Google search … and it leads them to this remote area of our county,” Huntington said.
The travelers in the cases were often families and tourists from out of state who were unfamiliar with the area. He said they would type in “Utah” and follow the directions up East Mountain, eventually calling for emergency help.
In every case, search and rescue teams were able to help them and their cars get off the mountain. However, officials say Friday’s incident was “the worst one to date.”
An 18-wheel semi-truck hauling a 53-foot reefer full of Red Bull was directed by his navigation system to take the road, but got stuck in the mud, teetering on a steep hill. The driver was rescued and the semi-truck was retrieved the following day.
The sheriff’s office said it has contacted Google about the issue approximately 40 times over the past years and even placed signs on the road warning motorists not to proceed if they were following Google Maps to “Utah” or if they were not equipped for the terrain.
“We’ve had to take those steps to try to be able to mitigate the problems, but we haven’t had any luck with Google until today,” Huntington said on June 3.
After the semi-truck nearly fell down a hill over the weekend, the sheriff’s office information technology department reached out to Google again on Monday hoping to see a change. ABC4 also reached out to the technology company on Friday (the day of the incident) and received a response saying they would send a statement on Monday.
Before a Google spokesperson sent the statement late Monday afternoon, the issue had been fixed.
“We use multiple sources to update the map – including contributions from the community, information from local authorities, along with Street View and satellite imagery. We’ve updated this route on our map and it should be reflected in the coming days.”
Google spokesperson
Huntington said he is “super excited” it has been fixed and expects there to be significantly fewer calls from the area now that Google has changed the location of Utah’s pin.
“We’re happy that [travelers] won’t run into that problem anymore, it won’t damage their vehicles or cause problems, and then we’re able to keep our resources in the most populous areas of our county,” he said.
He said that while getting stranded was not the drivers’ fault, these incidents show the importance of being prepared with water and granola bars, as well as checking the route ahead of time.
“It goes to show that you can’t always expect what’s going to take place, we always need to be prepared for things that we don’t expect,” he said. ” If something seems weird or something seems [not] right, stop and find out what’s going on before you proceed.”
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