One take-home message for me:

Essential safety gear (including communication items and extra eyewear) should be up to date and secured inside the car, so they can be located and used after an emergency.

1. He found a flare in the other car, but it was expired.

2. He had a cell phone, but he could not find it.

3. He used the other drivers glasses to see.

Hence, my rationale for having two PLB's. One is in the backpack that always stays in the truck. The second is tied into my aviation survival vest.

Stuff happens.

Another article said that it was a county sheriff detective who did some of the pinpointing for them, and they did the legwork.

He was lucky that there was a stream nearby. From my faint memory of the area, its kind of dry, esp this time of year. I wonder if, in the future, he will carry more gear and supplies? Nothing brings the point home more than an incident like this!

We all talk about telling people where we're going when traveling or hiking, but this happened when the guy was apparently just going from Point A to Point B, something we all do fairly regularly. We aren't likely to leave a message about that on our kitchen table, or ask someone to call for help if we don't show up by 3:30.

When one car practically lands on the car of a previous accident, I would think that particular spot needs a barrier. I wonder how many other accidents have happened there?

Sue

They identified the second driver today...

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/10/01/2_crashes_2_missing_men_2_different_results/

He had been there a week before the second crash and was "badly decomposed".

Can you imagine... You plunge off a cliff and at the bottom of the cliff is another car and badly decomposed body? That must have been very demoralizing... almost like a living hell of sorts. Sounds like something from a horror movie.

Time for a guard rail at that location....

In an car accident, stuff gets broken/ moved around / lost. I keep an old cell phone & charger in the truck -- for dialing 911. In this case its unlikely that cell service would have worked, but its worth $5 to keep a phone + charger handy.

Bad Karma: you go off the road, are badly injured, can't leave, can't contact anyone, and your only shelter is right next to a smashed car with a stinking dead man in it.

About cell phones: first off, everyone knows that a cell phone doesn't need active service, it only needs a charged battery to call 911, right?

I am very vague on how cell phones work. From what I understand (perhaps mistakenly), a signal is transmitted from a satellite to a cell tower, and then to a cell phone. If you're not in line-of-sight with a tower, you don't get a signal. Right? So why is it that I can stand in my yard and not get a signal, and a few minutes later, I can be still in the same spot and get 3 bars? Is it the movement of a satellite that has that effect?

Sue

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Sue,

Keeping in ming that I work for the cell company with the ampersand in the title, you can trust what I am about to give you:

Starting from the handset in your paw, the call is converted into a digital signal (one's and zero's) and then transmitted via radio frequency (RF) signal to the closest serving tower for your carrier (often not the single closest tower).

From the tower antenna, (on 2G and 3G networks) the signal comes down the tower in copper coaxial cable and into the radio infrastructure equipment. There it is converted from RF to fiber optic signal path or copper cable path from the cell site to the Local Exchange Carrier (LEC) landline central office and into the public switched network. On a 4G/LTE network the radio is on the tower, and fiber optic cable replaces the coax down the tower, providing a faster path into the Fiber PSTN.

Once into the public switched telephone network (PSTN) it goes to your carrier's Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO). Then back into the PSTN to either the land line you called, OR to the MTSO of the cell phone you called (if another carrier) and back down a reversal of the chain I just described. This all assumes your call stays in the same local area (like Seattle). The story gets longer if it is a call to another area (Seattle to LA)

Take note, the towers do not talk to each other wirelessly (they can, but it is rare enough not to discuss), AND the satellite does not come into play (except for timing and GEO Location for E911).

That was the quick and dirty version. I can get deeper, but probably not right for here.

I thought that was a great explanation for the question posed.