Finding a blind alley with Google Maps
Toronto man looking for a sightseeing shortcut wound up stranded on Newfoundland back road
He thought he was using a Google-approved shortcut, but the back road taken by a Toronto man visiting Newfoundland last week ended in a two-day, $900 rescue operation that caused him to miss his flight home.
IT professional Mark Sardar, 38, was in Newfoundland on a business trip last week, with plans to fly home Wednesday afternoon. That morning, he decided to do some sightseeing at Grand Falls before heading to Gander International Airport. After visiting the tourist attraction, he punched the airport’s address into the Google Maps application on his phone and was directed to cut across a 15-kilometre side road to get to the TransCanada Highway.
Although the road was a little slippery, “I went pretty much 10 kilometres without hitting any kind of snow,” Sardar told the Star. Then he hit about a foot of the white stuff, and the rental vehicle got stuck.
“I was able to clear out the snow with my hands.”
He wanted to head back, but that wasn’t an option on the narrow road, he said. “I kept looking for a place to make a turn so I could get back, but there was almost no way to open the door, even.”
So he carried on, getting stuck and successfully digging the car out once again. When it happened a third time, however, he said his hands were too scratched up and cold to dig. “I couldn’t continue anymore because it hurt and it burned,” he said. Instead he called 911 and waited two hours for RCMP officers to pick him up. Back in town, he accompanied a tow truck to where the rental was still stranded. But the truck only made it a few kilometres before it got stuck, too. On Thursday, Sardar was forced to hire yet another vehicle — this one with a front loader to push snow out of the way — to rescue both the rental and the first tow truck.
The ordeal, which prevented him from flying home until Friday, cost him $900.
In speaking to the tow-truck drivers, Sardar learned that at least three other people in the last few years had made the same mistake and got stranded on the road. The shortcut was once used by loggers, he said, but hadn’t been maintained recently. Both Sardar’s laptop and iPhone pointed him to the shortcut, he said.
“I personally don’t blindly depend on technology,” he said, adding that he believes a sign indicating the road is run down could prevent more incidents.
“I still like Google Maps. I’m at fault technically. I should have made a judgment call and pulled back.”