Jumper cables and spare gas cans have been a thing for quite some time; and Li-Ion battery boosters which can start a car multiple times are small enough to car

Jumper cables and spare gas cans have been a thing for quite some time; and Li-Ion battery boosters which can start a car multiple times are small enough to carry in a pocket. Everyone driving in the wilderness should have these things in the trunk in addition to a spare tire and some water. The majority of problems which strand people are flat tires / dead batteries / overheating / no gas; which are all trivial to fix on one's own with preparedness appropriate to the environment. Furthermore, mechanics are readily available in rural areas; and when horse transportation was common, farriers and vets were also common. These people drive out to your location and fix stuff, although you might need to walk to them without a phone. And any rural mechanic can hack a fix to the mechanical components of an internal combustion engine well enough to get it home. So, if you accept Zipcar's terms of service ("don't remove our interlock / hack the ECU"), this is fundamentally different because it's a failure mode which only Zipcar can fix.