Very practical advice, but there's a few reasons things like this can't make the issue disappear. For example, a topo map could kill an amateur because they don't know how to use it and they might even know this about themselves, and assume that an interactive display with "you are here" is a safer choice. For someone that can read a map, what if it doesn't show trails but an app does? Even people who are reaching for a smart choice and bring their app-map and paper-map can still have the rug pulled out from under them at any time just because they didn't compare the two often enough, then the app somehow fails them and it's too late.

Not everyone is an engineer, and they may simply not be aware that things like reliability / stability / user-control / user-consent for phones/apps/SaaS is a complete joke compared to any other kind of technology. Someone out there probably has a "life alert" app that used to work but has been recently broken because the API to pre-load the "one trick all seniors should know" advertisements recently changed. Someone can't see to dial emergency services because their huge-font-app was removed from the app store/marked as malware, or maybe their flashlight-app doesn't work because a server or cell connectivity went down and it can't phone home telemetry.

All the following things are true at the same time. Backup plans, knowledge, and tactics are good. Victim-blaming is often very tempting/easy. Apps have no doubt saved lives as well. We can still acknowledge issues and try to do better. "Death by GPS" as a recognizable figure of speech should not be a thing. It's no longer a solid bet that "works today" means "unless I change something, it's working tomorrow".. this is bad and is mostly unnecessary. As time goes on advice to avoid technology to avoid associated problems always becomes impractical (good luck throwing away your phone/email to avoid spam) so at some point we have to actually admit and address the problems.