Do you want personal anecdotes? In the era before smart phones I'd definitely wandered into circumstances where the radio was what alerted me to tornado sightings in a state i was unfamiliar with on a long drive.

I would not have thought to bring a stand alone radio in the car that i was borrowing from a family member on that drive. Even in the modern era, it's not hard to believe that someone might have forgotten their charging cable for their phone and allowed it to run down, or a whole myriad list of reasons why a phone may be operating.