[PHOTOS] Absence of cellular network: teenagers are close to death and cannot call for help

The mother of a student, who was close to death in a car accident last weekend with three friends, deplores the absence of a cellular network on part of Route 172 between Sacré-Coeur and Saguenay.

Juliette Bouchard, who is studying in Saguenay, was returning home to Tadoussac on Saturday around 4 p.m. with three of her friends to spend the weekend there, when she swerved onto Route 172. After a few rolls, their car crashed. landed in a deep ditch where there was a stream.

Miraculously, their car landed on its wheels and the young girls managed to get out of it by their own means.

“The firefighters probably told us that if the car had stayed on the roof, they wouldn’t have been able to get out of the vehicle and since the ditch was deep, no one could see them from the road,” the police said. Juliette’s mother, Mireille Pineault.

In a state of shock

The young women walked through the water and back up the slope to join Route 172 to call for help, but there was no cellular service.

They had to wait for a truck to stop to pick them up and take them more than 20 km away in order to have access to the network, while they were cold and in a state of shock.

“They tried every way to call 911, but it was impossible.”

According to Ms. Pineault, the accident occurred at kilometer 48, approximately in the middle of the trip (kilometer 0 is located at the intersection of roads 138 and 172).

It was only at kilometer 28 that they were finally able to contact the emergency services.

“It is known that there is no network over a distance of about 40 km. It’s the stress for all the parents whose children take this road to go to study outside.

“Had they been unable to get out of the vehicle for whatever reason, the end could have been tragic due to the lack of cellular service. Nobody would have stopped because we couldn’t see the car along the road. This is what is inconceivable.”

“We are still in 2023. We go to the moon and we stay in communication and we can’t have it between Sacré-Coeur and Chicoutimi? When there was the G7 in La Malbaie in 2018, the governments deployed $15 million in time to say so to improve the cellular network for Donald Trump. It’s not because they can’t,” Ms. Pineault said.