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
Death Road, Bolivia, (as seen in Top Gear), – by far… down on a mountain bike (11,500 ft in approx. 20 miles), and back up in random minibus. That, or driving from London to Cape Town in 02-03…
What was scarier: the ride down or the ride up?
Up by long-shot – lack of control… they do keep left however, so the driver’s of descending vehicles can better judge the edge.
I did that in June 2023 with my 16yo son! Super fun… the ride down is a pretty non-technical mountain bike ride. My son needed his own guide (liability, apparently… since he was under 18). His guide was really happy when the two of them could go bombing down the road together. The way back up in a minibus was on the new highway. Driving in Bolivia was actually pretty good… but you need to get used to passing buses and trucks going up hill even though it’s a no passing zone. Driving in cities and towns was interesting… intersections are packed with cars and people slowly making their way past each other.
The roads into and out of Topanga Canyon are pretty sketchy. Especially when they wash away or get blocked by a boulder and you have to take Old Topanga Canyon Road in the dark with coyotes.
https://www.instagram.com/sweethometopanga/p/CYnlNmLrd6F/
Anza Borrego in my XJ. Not particularly scary or sketchy (although I did end up temporarily high and dry on a rock).
No what made that road bad was the washboard surface. Forever after that road my Jeep was a rattletrap :/ .
Every Tuesday I drive over the Deception Pass Bridge in Oak Harbor, Washington.
Two lanes, low steel railings, 180’ drop to the often turbulent water below.
Not so bad in a car. Different feeling entirely in a semi or large box truck where your seat is taller than the railing directly below your side view mirrors.
Crossing that span in a big truck used to creep me out.
I’d go slow and look straight ahead. Now I’ve gotten used to it and enjoy the view. Unless it’s windy or foggy in which case it’s extra creepy.
I’ve had to cross it with a pretty nasty side wind before. Not fun but there’s no other choice once you get to it. No way to turn around.
https://www.qsl.net/kb4rpv/WA-bridge_files/image002.jpg
When I used to be a parts store runner I had to take some roads that were uh…
Well they used to be roads.
There were sections where they were barely wide enough for my car to get through them. The rest had tumbled off the mountainsides. And the funniest part is, the DOT, instead of fixing them, permanently affixed big yellow road signs in front of the crumbled away sections. So you’d be going along a road, come around a corner, and then have to dodge into the other lane because six yellow and orange striped signs were driven into the pavement. I have a picture of it somewhere.
I have found the pictures. Enjoy. This was one of three spots like this I drove through every single day.
https://imgur.com/a/EI3IP3e
I visited a friend in the city of Recife, Brazil, in 2009.
One night, they piled 7 of us into a Ford Ecosport, which looked like an ’03 Escape ran through the dryer on high.
(Had a CNG conversion, which was pretty dope. The fill port was under the hood and it looked like the station attendant was plugging into the matrix with the hose.)
We were going to the bar. As we drove, the driver kept flashing his high beams as we approached red lights and then floored it through.
I asked “what in the fuck are you doing?”
He replied (translated from my friend), “If you stop at red lights at night, there’s a good to fair chance someone will come up and shoot you in your car and steal it. So we rather risk the red light ticket.”
So whatever road that was, that’s the dangerous one.
I must admit, it didn’t occur to me until reading some of these stories that sketchy roads aren’t always determined purely by the actual road conditions, but also other factors such as “getting robbed” or “taking fire.” Yikes. I’ve gotten myself into some hairy driving situations before, but at least none of them involved dodging gunfire or highway bandits.
The Kora Reserve (now Kora National Park), east of Mt Kenya. In the 1980s some American missionaries tried driving an International Scout in there and broke the frame climbing out of a wash— they ended up using it as a tool shed, I think, once it got extracted. The National Museum of Kenya had a research camp there, which only Land Rovers and Land Cruisers could reliably get to. And for those of you old enough to remember *Born Free*, George Adamson had a camp there.
I remember seeing a documentary somewhere about the history of four-wheel drive, which shared an amazing fact: among the world’s more primitive peoples who had never seen an automobile before, for 40% of them, the first automobile they ever laid eyes on was a Land Rover. Which always makes me chuckle and think of “The Gods Must Be Crazy.”
Jamaica, the whole island. Mostly narrow, winding, hilly roads – which seems like a driving wonderland.. But everyone goes flat-out & nobody hesitates to pass anywhere/anytime. Auto Anarchy. Add lots of people on foot, or bikes + pets, livestock & wild creatures everywhere, and it’s truly terrifying. Nearly 30 years since I was there, and my heart rate & blood pressure went up just thinking about it.
One of the new hires I trained at my work was a police officer in Jamaica. His stories made me never want to visit.
Got on a bus in Negril once and it had no brakes. The driver would just gear down and coast to stops. It was packed and everyone would laugh when the bus coasted past a stop and everyone waiting had to run to get on.
There are four roads that go to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and all of them are absolutely awful. The quickest way in is 45 minutes of bone-rattling gravel. Four-wheel drive will not give you a smoother ride.
However, it is totally worth the effort, especially if you plan on camping because there are no city lights for 40 miles to obscure the stars. Keep an eye out for our lost hubcap!
Riding my ’71 Honda CB350 from Seattle area to Port Angeles are a series of bridges. Some of them are like the original one in the article, two-lane steel grating. As I was coming over a hill and right onto the bridge the unexpected side winds caught me and moved me sideways an entire lane. Remember it was a two lane bridge. Fortunately there was no oncomign traffic else I wouldn’t be here. Even in a car, I’m a bit hesitant and cautious in similar situations.
I’ve been on some pretty sketchy off road trails, but I wouldn’t consider those roads. I think the most consistently stressful road I’ve been on is I-24 between Nashville and Clarksville. Bumper to bumper with tons of semis and everyone doing 80+
When I was a kid (80’s) my parents refused to drive on Rt. 17 in Southwestern NY – it was a two lane “highway” choked with semi trucks and assholes playing high speed chicken . They’ve replaced it with I-86.
As for me, the entire transportation system of Greene County, PA is just absolute, half-paved dogshit filled with fracking trucks and woodland trails that Google Maps thinks are wide, driveable boulevards.
The old Route 17 was indeed a terrible road. Semis going through downtown made the right lane a tripping hazard thanks to the tires compacting the asphalt, leaving a large hump in the middle. Nobody walked if they could avoid it. So parking downtown was a zoo. The 4 lane bypass around town made things much better.
Dug Bar Road in the Imnaha gorge is a narrow sketchy dirt road into Hell’s Canyon and neither of are good on high narrow stuff so we turned back and had a relaxing beverage in Imnaha, pop 81.
I-16 and I-285 in Atlanta, GA.
Sweet fancy Moses…
Y’all have probably all heard my stories about that place, but I’m not kidding when I describe it as Thunderdome. 85mph and bumper to bumper madness. In the summer, just random cars on fire.
I saw an S-10 Blazer overcook a lane change and end up on 2 wheels long enough for me to touch my wife on the arm and say “Look at that!” before he set it back down and just. Kept. Going.
The first time I drove those roads, I watched half a sheet of drywall and a 5 gallon bucket of paint fly out of a trailer and explode in rush hour traffic, and no one even slowed down.
I have a friend who drove 285 to and from work. He said that almost every day on his commute, he saw an accident where it was likely someone was killed.
Madness. Utter madness…
Edit: I think what makes Atlanta so scary is that not only do they all want to kill everyone else, they all seem to want to die as well.
“I live in a city where ‘merge’ is a personal challenge – ‘yeah, I’ll merge with ya, get the hell out here!'”
Jeff Foxworthy on Atlanta traffic
For a long time, I would have said the Pulaski Skyway, with its lack of shoulders, plus entrance ramps that ascend from below into the LEFT LANE.
But a few years ago, I took a wrong turn coming out of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and found myself in a tangle of apparently new, single-lane roads clinging to mountainsides. No guardrails, sheer drops, blind curves. And brand-new, very expensive homes that will definitely burn to their foundations before any fire apparatus gets up there.
White Pass in WA state (Highway 12). Normally not a bad route and quite scenic. As a young man reading a map for apparently the first time ever, I thought it would be a great way to save some time going from SW Washington to Yakima, in December, in a blizzard. My trusty chariot, a ’83 Nissan/Datsun 720 RWD truck with bald all-season tires and exactly two railroad ties for weight in the back, would carry me through with aplomb…or so I thought. It was during this trip that I learned about driving in a whiteout, the involuntary lane change due to wind/zero traction, using snowdrifts to brake, and how an object in motion will stay in motion regardless of whether the road chooses to turn away from the direction of travel. So very, very scary.
My wife is from Bolivia and has traveled the road to Yungas, before they implemented an actual road that people didn’t die on daily.
For those that watched the TG Bolivia special – yes, that road.
I’ve done some stupid sh*t on very sketchy roads all over North America, but she wins this family dumb-off by a mile.
In 1993 I took a western U.S. road trip in a big loop from north of Chicago to L.A., up the coast and into Canada and back. My fourth scheduled day was supposed to take me from Montrose, Colorado to the Grand Canyon via the Million Dollar Highway. I was doing this in my 1989 Firebird, in April. My naive self wasn’t aware that spring in the Rockies is some of the sketchiest weather ever, but nevermind that, I headed south from Ouray up the pass. I drove right by the sign that says, “Snow Tires or Chains Required When Flashing” because I thought, hey, I’d been driving Firebirds in the winter for years, how bad could it be? Goodyear Gatorbacks have never let me down.
Turns out not only is this illegal, but also a Very Bad Idea, as I found out about a mile up from the tunnel, when my Firebird simply refused to advance any further on the ice. If there were any guardrails in this spot, they were covered by a small lump of plowed snow. Any attempt to maneuver it in gear in any direction sent it sliding down further. A three point turn was no option, so I somehow got it sort of straight and put it in neutral and let gravity roll it down the mountain backward about a mile and a half (yes through the tunnel too), being very judicious with the brakes, until I got to a lookout spot where I was able to get turned around and drive back down to Ouray.
I made it back to Ridgeway where a minimart clerk gave me directions to Cortez, around the mountains instead, which added about a few hours to my estimated arrival time.
It wasn’t until years later that I learned the Million Dollar Highway is considered one of the most dangerous roads in the country. I’d like to try it again someday, but in midsummer, thank you very much.
Funny, I was going to say my sketchiest to be the Imogene pass between Telluride and Ouray. My Dad and I started over it in his base Dodge Caravan. We got further than you’d think but yeah, not the best vehicle for the job, even in summer.
I once did that road northbound after an October snowstorm. Waited until after lunch in Silverton and the uphill side was fine. Downhill to Ouray was still snow covered. This is in a RWD Aerostar with average all season tires. No problem, put it in low and rolled 25 miles down the mountain without touching either the brakes or the gas. Unbelievably slow, but we made it without a single code brown moment.
This is mine, also. Like you, I luckily didn’t know the deadly reputation of this highway until after our drive. We set out from Ouray in the morning after an all-night snow in our 1991 Volvo cross-country with very good all-weathers. (this was the trip that made me realize that snow tires are the way to go and I’ve always had them since then) The scariest drive I’ve ever experienced, bar none. Guard rails? None to be seen (and I really don’t think there are many, if any). It started snowing about 20 minutes up the road and visibility was miserable. There were times when I seriously couldn’t tell where the edge of the road was, and there’s not much “road” on that road, either. The only good thing was that there were no other cars coming the opposite direction, especially since there are portions of that road where “two lanes” is wildly optimistic. Funnily, we were passed about an hour into the trip by a diesel VW Rabbit absolutely hauling ass up the mountain. I never found out if he made it or not. Anyway, after a few hours of <10 mph creeping, we made it down the other side and heaved a great sigh of relief. Never again!
“Goodyear Gatorbacks have never let me down.” That drew a chuckle.
Kids, take it from Florida Man – no gator of any kind is built for the snow, not even the kind made by Goodyear.
I grew up around Durango/Cortez/Dolores. I can confirm — just about anybody in the area has similar stories to these regarding US550 from Durango to Silverton.
There’s a memorial on the pass for snowplow drivers killed on the job. By avalanches.
Southern MD Thomas Johnson Bridge (also known as the Solomons Bridge) across the mouth of the Paxtuxent river always is sphincter clinching. 140 feet up with no above roadway superstructure (the sense of ‘enclosure’ it provides makes me feel better on the next scariest, the Bay bridge), 2 undivided opposing lanes, no shoulders and only concrete jersey barriers on the edges… yup, that’s a hell to the no for me. I grit my teeth and bear it when it’s unavoidable, but my friend just pulls over and gets his passenger to drive it when he has to cross it.
I-81 through Virginia
Distant runner-up – an unpaved one-lane logging road on a mountain in North Carolina that I went up accidentally in a Town Car and had to make an Austin Powers turn to get back down
I-81 in Virginia is a cake walk compared to the same road in Northeast Pennsylvania.
I’ve haven’t had near the trouble in PA
Ex Scranton here. I agree.
I’m assuming the climb/descent at the southern end? Because most of 81 is mind-numbingly boring.
Yes, that’s the part, and also trucks that randomly drift into the other lane without signaling
Imogene Pass, Yankee Boy Basin, Alpine Loop and the Ophir Pass in a rental Wrangler JL Sahara on stock street tires, alone.
It was a blast though, with a lot of butt-puckery shelf roads but magnificent views.
Don’t recommend if you’re afraid of steep slopes, narrow roads and heights.
“Butt-puckery.” Heh. All my life, my dad has ranked scary situations by what he calls their “pucker factor.” The scariest ranking? “Pucker factor 10.”
I-95 in New England
Have you ever heard of a vintage VW bus adventure called the Shasta Snow Trip? There’s lots of video from its 24 year history on YouTube. So I’d say that…those are the craziest most sketchy roads I’ve been on!
I’m not sure I have an answer, as I’ve done plenty of sketchy mountain passes and driven along cliffs all over the country. I think the most butt-puckery, but only because of weather conditions, was Ophir Pass in western Colorado. It isn’t super scary in normal conditions, but I got caught in a mid-spring ice storm that put an inch of ice on everything and made the descent into Ophir super sketchy and not in the least bit fun. Whether that is actually the scariest road I’ve done I’m not sure, but it came to mind first, so maybe so.
Mt Washington Auto road for sure.