Other than when you’re heel-toeing in your pajamas as you pilot car-shaped polygons through a flat-screen LED landscape, you probably don’t like or ever want to be scared by the roads or terrain you’re driving on.
Challenging roads are fun, bring ’em on. You can just take it easier, go slower, or turn around if a set of twisty bits proves too taxing or a trail is gnarlier than what you’re up for. But a dangerous road (or bridge, or tunnel, or trail) that simply must be traveled to reach the destination will have any driver looking for a detour. And those are the driving experiences we’re Autopian Asking you about today!
I got to drive what would have been some truly harrowing roads and trails along the Baja peninsula thanks to a press trip back in the aughts. Radio-control car maker HPI Racing introduced its Baja 5b gas buggy by flying the editors of the big four RC buff books (print magazines were still a thing then) to Mexico for a tour with Wide Open Baja. We spent two days in the outfit’s VW-powered buggies with stops along the way to wheel the new 1/5 scale model. Lots of fun, as you can imagine.
I say the roads would have been harrowing because instead of being alone in the desert in a “regular” car or truck that might not make it through (or home), we were on a tour with guides in purpose-built off-roaders, and each driver could go as slow as they wanted or fast as they dared, which was rarely as fast as the buggies could go. Challenging and fun, yes, but scary, no.
Here’s what used to really give me serious four-wheel frights:
The Jamestown [expletive] Bridge.
I swear, I just shuddered typing the words. This overgrown, underbuilt, Erector-set-looking steel structure was a sphincter-clencher on a number of levels. First, it only had two lanes. No, not two in each direction, two lanes total. And they were narrow, with no room for a breakdown, and nothing to separate you from the cars hurtling toward you other than a mutual desire to complete the crossing alive. Second, the bridge was not paved. No no. Instead, you drove over steel grating. I kid you not, you could see through the driving surface to the cold water below, which really made you appreciate every inch of the 135 feet you would fall if you drove over the side of the bridge (I recall the guard rails being about as thick as electrical conduit) or the whole damn thing collapsed beneath you. And it definitely felt like the whole damn thing might collapse beneath you. The weight of traffic alone was enough to make it buck and bounce, and when the wind got up (which it did, frequently), you could feel it yaw and sway. I have no doubt many prayers were uttered between the shores that wretched bridge spanned until it was finally closed in 1992 with the opening of the rock-solid Jamestown Verrazano Bridge – side by side below.
The old steel structure only got scarier as it rusted and nature tried to reclaim it, evolving into a ruddy green-veined hulk as vines crawled over the corroding girders. It stood until 2006, when explosives were used to bring the monster down. Its steel bones went to the scrapyard and the moorings were planted elsewhere as artificial reefs, but I swear, you can still hear it creaking and popping if you listen closely in the dead of a cold winter night in Jamestown.
Whew, that was a lot. What’s the scariest road, bridge, trail, or tunnel you’ve experienced? The Autopian is asking!
Top graphic image credit: bizoo_n/stock.adobe.com
There really hasn’t been any road, bridge, etc that was scary since I enjoy driving and don’t mind bridges, tunnels, etc (my wife doesn’t like bridges because vertigo) I’d probably say less location and more situational; snow and ice on freeway mountain passes (like Snoqualmie pass in WA) I have a lot of experience driving in it, it’s just more anxiety inducing. Also, my favorite bridge to go over has been the Sunshine Skyway in Tampa.
As far as shows on worlds deadliest roads, this one is pretty good…it’s some of the Ice Road Truckers (love that show) going to India, S. America, etc and driving on 1 lane roads way high right next to a cliff with parts of the road falling apart
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IRT:_Deadliest_Roads_episodes
Skippers Canyon in NZ with my Holden Adventra
Back in the late 80s I was a passenger on an interstate coach coming back to Melbourne from Sydney. As dusk fell, on the freeway out of the city there was a sudden torrential downpour that lasted maybe 20 minutes – I was sitting at the very front so had a panoramic view of the road ahead….for maybe 10 metres, since everything beyond that was completely invisible in the rain. As we continued along at 100km/h, we started seeing tiny glimpses through the gloom of all the rest of the traffic pulled off on the shoulder with their hazard lights on, rightfully deciding staying on the road was suicidal. I don’t know what superpower the driver had that meant he could see more than us – maybe his superpower was idiocy. I truly expected at some point to have a few milliseconds of warning before death as we rear-ended stopped traffic.
Belize!
Flew into the International airport and hopped in a rental jeep and drove west almost into Guatemala over innumerable speed mountain-like bumps and past machine-gun carrying troops along the way. Then after 2 hours of that we headed onto a 7-mile dirt/leaves/roots path (generous word) through the wet jungle over rickety bridges and next to massive drop-offs and past all sorts of insects, colorful birds and monkeys getting out twice to remove fallen branches in our path. Lucky for us, the “eco” resort was amazing but our subsequent drive into Tikal involved a three-hour stand-off with Guatemalan border agents. Exciting!
I have ridden on Oh My God Road (https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/728-oh-my-god-road-usa.html). Although the 8 Beltway around Houston going to George Bush Intercontinental Airport on a Friday afternoon was frightening for an entirely different reason.
It’s a stretch to call it a “road” but Black Bear Pass just outside Telluride, CO. Going up to the peak itself is a challenge, but not impossible but it’s the decent into Telluride that makes it (in)famous. On clear day, it’s equal parts breathtaking views of the city and a mountain backdrop; and shit-your-pants scary with steep descents, narrow section, tight switchbacks, and a section called “The Steps” which made me glad I wore my brown pants.
This was done in my old ‘95 Wrangler YJ on 31s” with a 2.5” lift, front and rear lockers, aired down to about 15psi, and it was the most exhilarating, scariest trail ever.
I need to go back.
I’ve “driven” that road. Read a bunch about it leading up to my trip in the area (where I went on many of the roads) and definitely read about how scary/sketchy it can be. Agree the views and everything is amazing, but let’s just say the road itself is much easier while operating an ATV ????
The Passo Gavia (Gavia Pass) between Ponte di Legno and S.Caterina Valfurva in Italy is one of the highest paved roads in the EU.
It is a narrow scenic ascent to 2600 m. The side leading to the pass from Ponte di Legno has no guard rails of any sort for long stretches and is so narrow that incoming cars must back up to the nearest stretch of road large enough to pass.
S. Fulton St in Baltimore. I was visiting the city and Google Maps routed me through that street. I was gob smacked by the number of abandoned buildings and open drug markets. I felt like I was driving through a scene in The Wire.
Never again Google!
I grew up working at a camp on Catalina Island. We were on the west end, and the west end road (past Two Harbors) likely qualifies as the sketchiest road I’ve driven. The good news is there was never much traffic. It was a single lane, carved into the mountainside winding to the back of every cove. On one side you had a cliff down to the ocean (or cove) and on the other, rock face. Generally at the back of the coves there was enough room for a turnout, so vehicles could pass eachother. Which meant that someone would have to reverse for a while to get to it if you met another vehicle head on.
The local UPS/Fedex Contractor would take an Isuzu NPR down this road at ridiculous speeds. Was always fun running into them.
Three words: Indiana Toll Road
I love “sketchy” roads when in the back country. So I would have to say that the worst for me would be the busy streets of Florence Italy when I never knew when I would hit a scooter darting out of opposing traffic to pass someone. Or the sketchy roads between Montego Bay and Negril Jamaica.
I once did the Ring Road in Iceland in a Toyota Aygo. Most of it was paved so it wasn’t an issue, but there’s a segment in the Northeast that’s literally a dirt road winding through the mountains with an incredibly steep drop on the sides. No guardrails either. I was trying not to think too hard about it, despite the fact that every other vehicle we encountered was a high riding 4WD rig. I was able to stick to about 5-10 mph under the limit, and avoided the washed out parts of the trail. Apart from some underbody scraping, we made it through no worse for wear.
I loved driving in Iceland in march and april, just one blizzard. Pushed some people out when they were stuck. We were driving a diesel AWD kia sportage with studded tires and 30+ years of snow and Ice driving experience.
Incredibly beautiful country.
decided to take a “seasonal road” shortcut in northern Michigan (not the UP) in a Saturn Vue. It was more of a jeep trail then anything. Just dropped you down under the tree canopy on the side of a hill. No way to turn around, just put it into 1st and kept moving forward trying to avoid the deepest ruts nearly scraping the doors on the uphill side of the cut hoping not to slide off the side of the path and down the hill.
I should have known better but I’m glad I didn’t.
Off today because of ice on the roads in SW Va. Got passed on double yellow by a newish Honda sedan last night while out visiting/checking road conditions. I’m in a 2002 WRX with 2yo snow tires, but the surface is freezing quickly. So, I’m at least 100’ back from the car in front when the Honda who had been within a car length of me decides to go for it. I let off as soon as I see him pulling left, so I couldn’t judge how close he came to T-boning the car in front of me which decided to make a left.
I see brakes & sliding, but thankfully no contact. Honda Guy (?) proceeds to run stop sign a couple houses later and almost goes into the yard across the street.
Took a good 10 minutes to go the next mile & 1/2 to my house: tree-shaded portions of the road had frozen.
The Subaru is just a tarted-up economy car with awd: the rearend only locks when I break traction. That’s fun when you’re playing in powder, but kind of a chore in ice/sleet/slush.
Damnit: I was so hoping for actual snow here. I’ll probably suit up in an hour or so and see if I can make it to the Blue Ridge Parkway up on Bent Mountain: they don’t gate it off south of 221, and the elevation means there’s a possibility of actual snow up there.
Y’all be safe out there.
In the aughts, I was serving subpoena duces tecum as a sole proprietor. No insurance, not nothing. I had an address, a map, and a Garmin StreetPilot III.
For various broke reasons, I was in my ’86 F150, 2wd. I know you can probably smell that truck from nostalgia. Monster I6, 4 on the floor (w/granny, aka, the ‘stump puller’), triangle vent windows, toe-based high beams, a 20 oz. bottle of gas and a straw stored behind the left headlight, an insulated copper wire behind the left, three empty white-box solenoid packages, and one gauge that kind of worked.
By ‘kind of worked’, I mean, ‘I had oil pressure. How much? No one knows’
Not being from the area, my map said I had to get on the BRP (maybe the other one?) for a bit and get off on the other side. I didn’t know what it meant, really, to be open to local traffic. So that was dumb on my part; I just needed to get to the other side.
Two feet of packed snow? By the time I gave up, I could only make a 937-point turn. If I slipped off the edge, I would have been found sometime early spring.
I ended up deciding that I would get that SDT out later and somehow made it home.
Anyway, the story was better in my head, but I can still feel the 8 yards of seat fabric come out of my ass when I was finally done clenching.
Southern Highway between Placencia and Dangriga, Belize. I mean, it’s a developing country, so not surprising, but for the faint of heart, I’d recommend taking a puddle jumper to your destination over driving. We drove by the remains of multiple very clearly fatal accidents on our way north and let’s just say the mood from our car was “Please oh please let us make it back to Belize City in one piece”.
Weather related: NY 73 between Keene and Lake Placid, NY. You do not want to be driving though here during a snowstorm.
Bridge: US Route 4 over the Hudson, Schuylerville, NY. A steel grate deck bridge much like Peter’s. Much smaller than the Jamestown one, but hardly even two cars wide, and the added complication of winter weather. The steel grate deck makes your car feel like it’s lurching in a radial motion, as if your car suddenly became a well yielded toothbrush. I hate this bridge and avoid it at all costs.
We rented a car (Suzuki Jimny!) in in Belize about 10 years ago and things seemed pretty fine. We’re actually going back next week and we’ll see how that driving situation is now.
We loved Belize, and honestly some of the roads are pretty solid (their brand new Coastal Highway, Hummingbird Highway, etc.). It was really only the Southern Highway that spooked us, as the condition is pretty poor, there was a lot of pretty grizzly accident wreckage, and some of the random monster speed bumps weren’t marked.
Hope you enjoy your trip! We’ve done Placencia, the ATM caves out in the west, and Caye Caulker. We’re actually going back to Caye Caulker in May.
Oh and I’ll add, if I had known a Jimny was an option, you bet I would have ended up with that over the damn Outlander we got.
Had a pretty good butt puckering drive going up over Blood Mountain in Georgia via 19 recently. It’s a great twisty road, have heard it compared to a poor mans Tail of the Dragon. But I was coming back from Knoxville and it was dusk. Got about halfway up and literally couldn’t see the end of my hood due to the clouds and rain. Luckily I have driven it enough so muscle memory somewhat took over but man that was not exactly fun that evening.
The 405 freeway in Los Angeles.
The Lachin Corridor road connecting Armenia with Nagorno Karabakh while it was still mostly unpaved. Looking out the side window to see the wrecks of vehicles, including tanks, that didn’t make it was a bit scary.
I think I ate snakes while crawling thru Nagorno Karabakh in Metal Gear Solid
New River Road in Cave Creek/Carefree Arizona. The Horny Toad restaurant menu says it best: “Ain’t new, ain’t no river, and it ain’t much of a road neither.” We saw it was going parallel to Carefree Highway, so figured we’d take it in what I think was an Avis Plymouth Sundance. Whole thing was getting SUPER bumpy until we found the damn thing washed out from a flash flood. Had to turn back around. The Plymouth made it, but barely.
That bridge was never fun, never seemed safe. Not that far away is the 84-91 interchange in Hartford. Another “traffic engineering” marvel. The Million Dollar Highway in the American Alps in Colorado is vertigo inducing.
Skippers Canyon Rd near Queenstown NZ. In a country of insane roads (tight undivided 4 laners going up and over mountain passes littered with trucks and RVs is the standard), this one is legendary. No rental cars or trucks are allowed there. The people that drive this road are crazy- I was in a minibus that was towing a trailer stacked with about a half dozen rafts. One lane mining rod with no barriers and thousand plus foot drops the whole way. My blood pressure was thru the roof and I couldn’t bare to even look out the window.
My own personal sketchiest driving experience did take place on a road that was sketchy enough on merit, but my experience illustrates how “sketchy” is often determined by the vehicle you’re in just as much as the road you’re on.
I have mentioned here before the epic Great American Road Trip my wife and I took in 2016, taking two months and 5500 miles to move cross-country from Oregon to Florida. It was me, the wife, Otto the black Lab service dog, and Roxy the floof cat, in a 1992 E350 Club Wagon XLT loaded to the gills “Beverly Hillbillies”-style, towing our 23′ camper loaded the same way. I never stopped at a scale house to check, but I am certain that we drove the entire 5500 miles pretty dangerously overloaded, at least as per Ford’s numbers, but that silky-smooth 460 never broke a sweat, and driving it never felt anywhere near as dangerous as the estimated payload would imply. However, there was one place where the transmission met its match (but luckily survived), the single biggest dodged bullet of the entire trip by far:
We had departed Glacier National Park headed for Yellowstone, our next major stop, when my wife, as navigator and concierge, saw that Garnet Ghost Town was not too far off the path. Since we wanted to get in at least one ghost town on our trip, we plotted our course. Its website tells you that there are two roads that lead to Garnet, and one is a Very Bad Idea to attempt in an RV or large truck. Well, screw that, we’ll take the other road, which is more convenient from here anyway.
We turned off MT-200, a four-lane highway, onto Garnet Range Road, and almost instantly found ourselves creeping up what felt like about a 75% grade, with the engine and transmission absolutely screaming under the load, at about 10 mph in first gear, at full throttle. Jeez, THIS is the truck route? We only traveled about a half mile up the mountain this way before we decided that this path surely must be at least as much of a Very Bad Idea as the other way in – in THIS rig, anyway – and immediately began looking for a place to turn around. Problem was, this was a two-lane road with a cliff wall going up to our left, and a cliff wall plummeting hundreds of feet to our right. Too steep to continue upward, but also too dangerous to try to back down. The only way out was up. So up we went, praying for a turnout.
We chugged along this way a bit further, white knuckles on the steering wheel, hyper-aware, in full sphincter lock. This was, indeed, a Very Bad Idea. Then I smelled something burning – some fluid was not happy. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a trail of something that the van was leaving on the pavement. I stopped and checked around and realized that the transmission fluid had boiled, and was noping out through the dipstick tube. Of all the fluids I had extras of in the back of the van, transmission fluid was not one of them. I began to wonder whether this entire rig was ever going to make it off the mountain. But to get off the mountain, we still needed a place to turn around, so up we go.
Finally, praise be to our merciful God, a turnout appeared on the right shoulder – barely big enough to back the trailer out of the right-of-way, and hopefully enough room to get us pointed back down the mountain. My wife hopped out to spot me. I told her to continuously give me real time estimates of how far the back tires of the trailer were from the edge of certain death. She helped me maneuver to within about 8 inches of the drop-off, which barely – BARELY – allowed me enough room to swing the side of the van around.
(This is where I insert some dating/marital advice: fellas, get you a girl who can calmly, competently help you back a trailer, especially under literal life or death conditions such as these. It’s a gold standard of wife-worthiness.)
We coasted back down to the highway, riding both the trailer brakes and van brakes – we’d already asked too much of the transmission on the way up to risk asking it to gear-brake on the way down. If we had not already ruined the transmission, I did not want to ruin it the rest of the way, and if we were going to ruin anything, ruined brakes are cheaper than ruined transmissions – and we had not asked anything of the brakes on the way up the way we had the transmission.
By the time we got back down to the four lane and tried to turn right to go back to Seeley Lake, Montana, the last town we had passed through, the poor E4OD barely had enough fluid to get into first gear, much less out of it. We called AAA for a tow, and Glen’s Automotive in Seeley Lake sent out a tow truck carrying a case of ATF, since I told them the simplest option would certainly be for us to drive to the shop, if we could. The van took every drop of transmission fluid the driver had brought with him, but it was enough to get it into gear and down the road. They even let us drop the camper and plug into their electricity, so we had a place to stay while they checked it out in the morning.
They came back with two pieces of good news: 1) I had unknowingly bought the van with a fairly recently replaced reman transmission; and 2) they drained, flushed, and refilled the transmission, and it came back with a 100% clean bill of health, with zero shiny bits in the fluid. We thanked them profusely for their generosity and hospitality, we paid the man, and down the road we went once again. For the rest of the trip and the rest of the next three years we owned that van, we never had one spot of trouble out of the transmission.
So thank you, Ford, for making our beloved “Van Morrison” such a tough sonofabitch – I’m still blown away and impressed that the transmission or any of the other major mechanicals survived that torture. And hey, Montana? QUIT TELLING PEOPLE THAT GARNET RANGE ROAD IS “THE SAFE WAY” TO GET A GODDAMN RV TO GARNET GHOST TOWN. If you’re in the area in an RV and want to see the place, trust me – either rent a car to go, hitch a ride, or skip the place all together for a different ghost town on flatter land. Also, if you ever have any sort of car trouble in the vicinity of Seeley Lake, Montana, Glen’s Automotive will take good care of you. They are good people.
The legendary Van Morrison, photographed on the winner’s podium, AKA finally making it to my parents’ house in Florida:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnRQJARUMAACthG?format=jpg&name=large