This feature is not targeted towards day trip hikers, whose low level of preparedness in other areas along with lack of experience means they probably won’t venture further than where they would be found by other hikers.
It's easy to lose the trail in some terrain and the people you're talking about likely wouldn't know what to do about it. Just last week I saved one of those guys from at best a rather unpleasant experience, at worst being stranded in the wilderness--and he didn't even lose the trail.
We had met on a local summit although we had approached it via different routes. We were on a spur off a longer trail--and he took the wrong direction when coming back to the main trail. I encountered him probably an hour later and realized his mistake and got him headed back to his car. Had he continued there was one junction ahead--if he took the left branch he would end up where I was parked which was miles from his car. If he took the right branch he would have failed to end up at a slightly more distant parking lot as by the trail it was about 16 miles away, going over a summit just below 12k' (we were a bit above 9k' at the time) in the process. His phone battery was dead, it was near the new moon and that route goes near cliffs.
