The recent series of news reports of stranded motorists brings to my mind the utility of a PLB or SPOT in those situations.

I still read forum threads comparing SPOT with PLBs, and folks comment something along the line that the PLB's support system may not be reliable because it is government run/supported, while in general it seems that SPOT users tend to rely on family-based rescue - having a family member react to a call for help and arrange rescue.

I was wondering if anyone knows whether the government - or anyone else - keeps statistics on how often people have turned on a PLB but for whatever reason there was no response. Either the signal was not received, or there was an error in the response communication process.

It would be interesting if there were statistics comparing PLB rescue information (time, misses, ...) with SPOT (and related device) rescue info.