Isolated incident

Directions offered by Google Maps to drivers sometimes don’t lead to the desired or intended destinations.

A 23-year-old man got lost in a mountain when he asked the digital map for a shortcut from Springville to Vernal in Wasatch County, Utah, USA

last 4 July. He and his Toyota Tercel got stranded on a dirt road in Strawberry Peak at night.

After calling for help via emergency hotline 911, the Wasatch County Search and Rescue team took three hours to get the driver back down the mountain unharmed, authorities said, according to Canoe.com.

Meanwhile, a 59-year-old Indian man was also stranded despite taking the right way to his destination.

Outpatient Raveendran Nair underwent X-ray for his back pain checkup at the Trivandrum Medical College in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala state last 13 July and unknowingly took a solo ride on a faulty elevator.

As the lift was going up, it went dead and dropped. Inside the dark elevator, Nair managed to see the emergency number on the elevator’s control panel using the dim light of his damaged mobile phone. His call went unanswered so he banged the doors and pressed the alarm button, but no one heard it.

Nair’s call to his wife, who actually work in the same building, could not connect. She reported him missing when he failed to return home and was not at his workplace either.

The trapped man was finally rescued 42 hours later when an elevator technician doing his rounds found him on the lift that was stuck between the first and second floor.

During the nearly two days Nair was trapped inside the dark lift, he told BBC News that he slept in one corner and peed and pooed in another corner. He also thought he would die.

Officials of the medical college suspended three workers who were supposed to check the lifts every closing time for negligence. A sign was also posted on the broken elevator warning people not to use it.