PLB's up here have a hefty fine if you fire them off without good reason.

As for SPOT - well, the call for rescue is from the private company. You ask me? SAR should charge SPOT for the bogus ones - then it's up to SPOT to pass it on and/or educate their customers.

However, again as we have discussed, this also leads to it's own set of problems - even people like me, who I consider in my own expert and not so humble opinion as responsible and reasonably experienced have issues in determining when to press the button - We've had a few discussions here where I've thrown out a few hypotheticals that it isn't so clear - even to me - and I tend to err on the side of caution.