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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

Especially in Canada. The directions are basically to get on the highway, and stay on it for 1000km

In this case, it's actually 3000km on Highway 1, that's it, the main highway in Canada and pretty much the only real highway to get anywhere across Saskatchewan to South Western Ontario.

They would have no reason to leave this highway unless maybe they wanted to take the shorter route through the states, but I have no clue how they could have ended up where they were in the middle of nowhere not even on a road. Glad they were ok, but jeez, common sense or look at a map at least once.

With a million or so trips between major Canadian cities during the winter, a few of them doing something silly is almost expected.

Having driven through northern BC quite a bit, there’s been dozens of times where a rockslide / logging truck rollover / construction has caused a detour off the highway and down some remote roads. Not saying that’s what happened to them, but rather that it’s best to be prepared because you never know what will happen.

Haha yeah, makes sense over there, but they were in the prairies, the flatest area in Canada! I guess the highway could have got blocked somehow and you have to take a backroad detour, but you'd probably be following a stream of traffic as well in that case.

Always agree it's best to look at a map to get a feel for the route or at least have one ready.

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