Have An Emergency Recovery Plan For Your Next Trip

When your road trip takes you too far for friends and family to easily reach you, your only option may be to flag someone down or get to a phone. Smartphones make it easier to get emergency contacts to your stranded site, but there are still a few things that could go wrong. Consider a few ideas to include in your emergency planning before heading out on your next trip.

Have Enough Power And Phone Plan

If you're stranded on the road, mobile devices are an easy way to get help. Unfortunately, smartphones and other mobile devices may have been around long enough to be taken for granted, leading to phones that are almost out of power when disaster strikes.

Multiple batteries is the way to go. Order more than one battery for your phone or other mobile device and keep them charged. You can keep the batteries in a container and store them away from heat or direct sunlight to avoid heat damage.

By swapping the batteries in as power is lost, you can essentially duplicate your phone's endurance. A phone that lasts four or five hours with normal use can go for ten, twenty or more hours with the same use.

This is useful if you plan on doing more than making calls. With modern mobile devices, tasks such as Internet usage, multiple apps and other activities can cause power to be lost much faster. As a matter of fact, the techniques in the next section can be power and resource hogs that can justify extra battery preparation. 

Mapping For Directions And Communications

Having a map of your trip is important for getting to the right place and finding emergency services, but it's necessary for communications as well. There are still parts of the United States that aren't covered by specific phone services--or any communications services at all--that must be planned for before your trip.

If you can't get a signal, you can't make a call or connect to the Internet to find important information. There are signal mapping websites available that can help you find areas that lack service that can help with planning.

Look at a map of your trip and compare it to a map of available communications signals. If your drive takes you through an area that has no phone service, you need to be aware of when you should be entering an exiting the area. With that information, if you're stranded in an area, you may have a better chance with walking into an area with a signal to call for help.

A physical map is useful, but a mobile map using Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites can do a better job as long as you have a signal. By having both a physical map and a mobile device map, you can track your position live and on paper.

Even though GPS signals can be lost in certain areas with weak signal coverage, you can estimate your position by looking at your last position on your phone's map. Although it's not your exact location, you'll at least have your position within a few miles of accuracy on the road.

With this information in hand, make sure to have a towing service in your contacts book. Be sure to look up towing services along your trip's path, or get in contact with a towing service company like R & R Towing that has a long enough reach to help. Contact a towing services professional to secure your vacation emergency plan.