EMERY COUNTY, Utah (KTVX) — Over the past several years, a county in central Utah has had a problem with drivers finding themselves stranded on top of a mountain, with Google Maps to blame. After pressure following the worst incident yet, Google has finally 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. Drivers have been finding themselves directed there when they type in “Utah” as their destination on Google Maps.
“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 Emery County Sheriff’s Office provided 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.
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 navigation system to drive up East Mountain, but the truck got stuck in the mud, teetering on a steep hill. The driver was rescued and the semi-truck was retrieved the following day.
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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 Monday.
After the semi-truck nearly fell down a hill over the weekend, the sheriff’s office information technology department reached out to Google again hoping to see a change.
A Google spokesperson said the issue was fixed by Monday.
“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,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
Google Maps now directs drivers to a location in downtown Salt Lake City if they type in “Utah” as the destination.
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.”
