[laci37]

I guess that was because they were afraid of it getting stuck in a tire. If I found a strange metal cylinder in my tires, I would probably pick it up a try to find out what it is.

[HPsquared]

Did they close the road and/or put a checkpoint in place? That'd eliminate that risk.

[prollings]

The road you're talking about was 1400km long

[bell-cot]

1400km / (70km/h) = 20 hours of driving. This was no "a thousand volunteers on foot spent days searching for even a scrap of evidence" effort.

[rmccue]

Pretty sure it's also the only road connecting a lot of these places; this is far remote WA.