Andes, NY – An elderly Manhattan couple whose car became stuck near their wooded Catskills vacation home died after nine fruitless attempts to make a cellphone call for help and after the woman searched in vain for a neighbor.
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State police and family members say 88-year-old Arthur Morris slid their car down an embankment 60 feet from their vacation home on May 3 in Andes, 115 miles northwest of Manhattan. Family members told the New York Daily News (http://nydn.us/J2Nwmh) that Morris tried to get out but became wedged between the tilted car and the ground and was asphyxiated.
His wife, 89-year-old Madeleine, walked to a neighbor’s empty house and died of exposure after a rainy night under a tarp.
Cell service is spotty in the rural area.
Two years ago, then-Congressman Scott Murphy sent a public appeal to cell phone carriers to cover Delaware County, but it never happened.
Arthur, a Juilliard-educated music teacher, had heart disease and a hernia. His wife, a retired professor who survived the Nazi occupation in France, had two knee replacements but was mentally sharp.
Madeleine had been honored as a Christian who helped Jews escape the Nazis in France when she was just 17.
And the NYS legislature bans cell phones in cars. Very sad. May their memories be blessed
THERE MUST BE A MINIMUM AND MAXIMUM AGE FOR DRIVER LICENCE
#1 –it had nothing to do with age of the driver.
#2–they had a cell phone–but no cell towers (same problem as happened on the Northway (I-87 north of Albany).
also the legislature bans use of handheld phones while driving, and this wasn’t the case.
you can have all the cellphones you want but if there are no towers or reception, they are useless.
you must force the cellphone companies to have reception everywhere, even in remote areas–they make enough money and should be part of their public service. Landline companies have to do it. Cellphone companies should be required to do it, at least to provide 911 service.
Camp L’man Achai is also located in Andes, NY. I have been there and was always bothered by the fact that there was no cell phone service.
Nebuch
Would on-Star have worked?
It sounds like she might have been unsuccessfully trying (“nine fruitless attempts..:”) to call a friend or relative. There’s a slight chance that a call to “911” would have worked.
Under FCC rules, a cellular carrier _must_ allow a “911 call” to go through, even if your phone doesn’t have an account with them. So it’s possible that her “own” carrier didn’t have good coverage, but another might have. And a call to “911” would have gone through on the one with a better signal.
– Just mentioning this to point out that, if you can’t get through to your friend/relative and it’s critical, it’s worth trying “911” with the chance of getting that alternate routing.
and don’t forget, cell phones is not to old
Can anyone explain why the GPS works fine even in the most remote locations (and its free service) but the cell service that charge us for service plus all the taxes and fees is so spotty and keaps cutting off all the time?
i hope never to be in such a situation, but i heard a good thing to do is to send a text message or email, that might go through at any given moment,
there is probably technology to get a satellite-driven 911 type of message out from a GPS or even a properly featured cellphone (if they would be developed that way). Maybe the phone companies could subsidize these calls -instead of putting in celltowers in remote areas.
I am overwhelmed by the response. Rather than mourning the fact that a righteous woman died, people are only interested in age. If they had been Jewish would people have mourned them? This woman was honored for saving Jews during the holocaust. May she rest in peace.