The most dangerous roads in the world.
 

Below, supposedly, are the 10 most dangerous roads in the world. Is the A44 really that dangerous?


Think your local roads are bad? From Bolivia to China and beyond, we name the world's 10 worst routes.

We all know local roads which can be considered 'dangerous' - poorly lit lanes, potholed tracks, stretches of motorway which attract the area's wannabe Schumachers and so on.

But what are considered the worst roads if you're travelling overseas? Below, in reverse order, is a top 10 of the world's worst roads, compiled by the Association for Safe International Road Travel.

These roads will have you driving among the clouds, along fast-eroding cliff tops with 3,500m drops, across deadly streams, through bandit territory and more. Suddenly, our local drive looks a whole lot less stressful...

10) Grand Trunk Road (India)
'GT', as it's often called, was built about 500 years ago to connect the east and western regions of the Indian subcontinent. Rudyard Kipling called it 'a river of life', but for the modern driver it's a nightmare. The 1,550 mile road is full of trucks and rattling buses manned by drivers without much respect for their lives - or yours. And then there's the cyclists, the pedestrians, the salesmen, the ox carts, the cows, the buffalos... You get the idea.

9) Patiopoulo-Perdikaki Road (Greece)
This dirt track leads from Patiopoulo down to Perdikaki in the Agrafa region of Greece. It's steep, busy, full of huge potholes and extremely slippery (due to the gravel surface). It's also very narrow in places, with no lines or guard rails on the edges. That's less than ideal given the sheer drop… on BOTH sides. The majority of the many fatalities here occur at night. Funny, that.

8) A44 (United Kingdom)
Much of the A44, a major road which runs from Oxford in southern England to Aberystwyth in west Wales, is fairly innocuous, but a 25mile section between Leominster and Worcester has a load of blind corners. A quarter of accidents here involve vehicles leaving the road, and even more are head-on collisions. Campaigners have helped get the speed limit reduced to 40mph in recent years, and it's monitored closely by officials. Nevertheless, the route remains popular with speeding bikers.

7) Luxor-al Hurghada Road (Egypt)
Egypt's most dangerous road links two tourist locations - the ancient city of Luxor in the south, and Hurghada, a hub for diving schools on the coast of the Red Sea. The route is well-known bandit territory, with travellers facing a high risk of ambush and hijack. To avoid detection at night, the vast majority of drivers opt not to use their headlights. And that has a rather predicable side-effect...

6) Cotopaxi Volcan (Ecuador)
This 25mile-long dirt track, one of countless dangerous roads in Ecuador, connects the Pan American Highway with the Cotopaxi Volcan National Park, which boasts one of the highest active volcanoes in the world. The treacherous route is peppered with holes, but the 'highlight' of the journey comes when you need to cross a bridge-less stream. It's particularly dangerous during flash floods… and flash floods seem to occur here even in the lightest of rains. You won't find that mentioned in any travel brochure.

5) Coastal roads (Croatia)
The Croatian coast (yes, a rather generic entry) makes the list due to the narrow and twisty nature of the roads, and a general lack of markings, lay-bys and side rails. For tourists, it's a particularly scary proposition when you add crazy, fast-driving Croats into the mix. The scenery on the jagged coast is absolutely stunning, but if you're driving, it's probably best to watch where you're going - and keep your fingers crossed that others do too.

4) Pan American Highway (Costa Rica)
The Pan-American Highway system, the longest drivable road in the world, runs an incredible 30,000 miles from Alaska to the lower reaches of South America. Several stretches can be considered 'tricky', but the most infamous section is Cerro de la Muerte, a high mountain pass which runs from San Isidro de El General to Cartago in Costa Rica. It's steep, narrow, twisty, full of holes and susceptible to flash floods and landslides. Did we mention that the name translates as Hill of Death?

3) Sichuan-Tibet Highway (China)
China has a massive population but, even so, the road accident figures make grim reading. At least 100,000 people are said to die on Chinese roads each year - or one person every 5 minutes. And, in fact, the least populated regions boast the highest death rates. If that bothers you, you'll want to avoid the 1,240 miles-long (but not very wide) Sichuan-Tibet Highway, which traverses at least a dozen different mountains with an average height of 4,000-5,000m. The high altitude means you'll be driving among clouds, and there's a high risk of landslides and avalanches to boot.

2) BR-116 (Brazil)
Brazil's second longest road runs 960 miles from Porto Alegre to Rio de Janeiro. The middle section, which covers around 250 miles from Curitiba to São Paulo, is the most infamous due to its high accident rate. Officially it's named Rodovia Régis Bittencourt, but it's known locally as 'Rodovia da Morte'. That's Highway of Death. Think steep cliffs, poor road conditions and unstable weather. Enough said?

1) The North Yungas Road (Bolivia)
Some of the nominations here may seem a little quirky, but few will deny that Bolivia's 'Death Road' is THE most dangerous in the world. North Yungas Road snakes across roughly 70km of the Andes, from La Paz to Coroico, with drops of up to 3,500m... and dozens of wrecked vehicles at the bottom. Drivers need to contend with crazy hairpin turns, oncoming traffic (often rushing to beat you into bends), an almost constant layer of fog and, during tropical downpours, high risk of landslides too. In the past, as many as 200-300 travellers are thought to have died in a single year, but it's carried significantly less traffic since the opening of a bypass in 2006. Tourist companies continue to cash in on the road's notoriety by offering extreme bike tours down it. We'll give that a miss, thanks.

Association for Safe International Road Travel.

#4. Also very foggy in the morning hours. Burns off by noon.

Uk?
 

Sat here in Delhi at the moment, I had to laugh at the mention of any road in the UK being on the 'most dangerous' list. The dictionary defines dangerous as:
1. Involving or filled with danger; perilous.
2. Being able or likely to do harm.
I find it hard to believe statistics would support its inclusion.

Sorry but whoever created this list probably works for a Labour council and is writing a story for the Guardian newspaper to defend the installation, at great expense, of revenue-generating speed cameras on that very stretch of road.

"These roads will have you driving among the clouds, along fast-eroding cliff tops with 3,500m drops, across deadly streams, through bandit territory and more."

Or crawling at 40miles per hour through featureless Oxfordshire countryside behind a caravan...HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS PEOPLE!!!!!

I believe there should be dozens of Chinese, Indian and other Asian, African and South American roads mentioned before even the first European...

Been to Cerro de la Muerte, Costa Rica, and correct me if I´m wrong, but I believe the name is more like a historical one, referring to the mountain region, not the road itself.

Any Interstate in the USA.

I will be doing that road in the next few days so I will find out how bad it is, I am in Coco at the moment but heading to Panama Friday morning

Cheers
TS

Always remember it the prats ON the roads that make them dangerous.

That's you, me and them:mchappy:

I never thought the India was particularly more dangerous than Russia or Kazakhstan or Pakistan and quite a few eastern European countries :confused1:

John

Point taken - maybe a bit of both though: see link but politics aside...

I'm spending two weeks in East Patel Nagar doing some IT training. Not sure we've completely escaped the rains because it is just 'spitting' now. The atmosphere is unbearable today. Even my local instructors are coughing like the tourists because the smog is so dense. It hasn't even been very hot here in the past week but with very little wind that hasn't helped. I've stayed in a few African cities in the last few years (including doing the West Coast on my Africa Twin) and I don't remember any of them having such poor air quality but then they're no way near as outrageously populated!

Quite
 

I thought I was fairly adventurous from a biking perspective.

Riding in Dehli is a lot more adventurous than I'm feeling today. Or tomorrow.

I know chaos just seems to work for the locals but without experience I'd be way out of my depth.

Wait till you do Lagos, Bangkok, or Jakarta :mchappy:

You get used to it quite quickly. However, you know you're supposed to do a 'life saver' look over your should before any manoeuver on a bike? I found I just couldn't even take my eyes off the road for even that short length of time without something or someone appearing in directly front of me. It's kind of exhausting.

My brain needs an outlet...
 

What strikes me as interesting is that without having to obey the same strict rules we do in the uk, the traffic does still move, rarely stationary or particularly quickly, but move it does. It is like the people are so focused on where they're going that they 'will' the traffic to continue moving by fair means or foul. In the UK everyone sits nose to tail, feeling slightly defensive because they are responsible for the jam but unable to affect anything. "I am upholding the system".

Here people don't see it like that, the only space you have is the bit of tarmac your vehicle is currently on. People don't appear to take it so personally - I mean what does 'being cut-up' mean anyway = you left a space and person next to you, who is more hungry for it, has taken it!!

I wonder whether we could benefit in the UK from this more 'insect-like' behaviour. What is it called again, the "hive mind"? Simpler, more locallly executed behaviours - a more organic system. Less contrived. Hmm, that concludes my thought for the day.

By having the A44 (United Kingdom) in that list immediately makes me think it was compiled by a Pan European riding miserable old b*stard sporting a high Vis jacket and a Shoeburth helmet (with intercom) and of course with police style reflective stickers.

His wife will be obviously called Mildred and he spends his weekends tutting at riders who have an IAM sticker.

Just saw a document which claimed there were over 98000 road fatalities in India in 2007. But sure you´ve got to keep in mind there´s a lot of people, and traffic, too. And it´s not the only country in the world, where traffic may look like a total chaos to the outsider.

From my personal (a tourists) point of view, I think I´ll rather ride the bike almost anywhere else in the future. Somehow in India, riding usually felt more like work than fun!! But I think it also taught a lot about how to be 100% alert, and ready to do any imaginable maneuvers the next millisecond, to avoid disaster. And to grow eyes on your backside as well! ´You´re never safe´ is a very good thing to keep in mind, even if you ride in a less congested country.

Wow
 

Can you imagine all those people? That's not far off the population of Hemel Hempstead!

In an article on the web, the authorities blame the increase in road deaths by the marked increase in car ownership - more people can actually now afford to run each other over. That's progress for you.

Who can tell about me about Grand Trunk Road? Now I am planning a trip to India in 2010. Waiting PM from knowers.

4) Pan American Highway (Costa Rica)
The Pan-American Highway system, the longest drivable road in the world, runs an incredible 30,000 miles from Alaska to the lower reaches of South America. Several stretches can be considered 'tricky', but the most infamous section is Cerro de la Muerte, a high mountain pass which runs from San Isidro de El General to Cartago in Costa Rica. It's steep, narrow, twisty, full of holes and susceptible to flash floods and landslides. Did we mention that the name translates as Hill of Death?


I just ride this road in the rain and fog, I just arrived in San Isidro with no issues at all. It was cold and wet at 3300m but by keeping away from the cars and trucks I survived. It may be more dangerous in the dry, because people may go faster,that said, there were 3 prangs, just rear enders, nothing bad.

Cheers
TS

I've already conquered two of these roads, two more to go on this particular trip. Do I get a prize of I do all 10...??

Road to Cotopaxi maybe dangerous but more important: Motorcyles are not allowed in the park :(...

Just tried a few days ago.

Marcus

cant believe the a44 is more dangerous than the GT road in india. thats mental. and totally untrue. whats wrong with blind corners anyway, thats what makes things fun...

if i fall off and die tomorrow, please don't anyone quote me on that.

ha ha ha haa ha ha haaaa. ha/

An Indian would see the A44 as a rather well made road. The clowns who crash and then blame their own lack of skill on the fact it isn't the M-6 (on which they can just sit in lane 2) wouldn't last two minutes in Rome or Paris, never mind the Grand Trunk Road.

The difference is that these same clowns, rather than improve their skills start with the casualty figures. In the UK we are now at a level where thousands of people will work for months to fund a project that will in theory prevent the death of one person on the roads. The Indian view, forced upon them by more pressing matters is that people are actually rather easy to replace and we have too many to start with.

Removing so called safety features BTW has been shown to reduce casualties when looked at sensibly. They take out all the road markings and suddenly the road seems smaller, so drivers think more and when there are collisions they tend to be at lower speeds. The people employed to put up signs and bumps and cameras don't like that idea for some reason though, they'd rather have GPS controlled speed limiters and a vast army of civil servants to control them.

Andy

Maybe our own perception of things doesn´t always tell the whole story?? And especially, if we try to compare traffic in our home country or continent, to somewhere, where we´ve only been a short time as tourists.

And also the road conditions in the summer may be VERY different than in the winter (this is the case in my home country, for example)... you´d have no idea of this, if you visited in the summer.

Maybe it could be possible to find some statistics about road injuries & fatalities from the roads mentioned, combined with information about the total kms/miles, that vehicles have been using that road. That might give you some idea of what is really dangerous, and what is not.

Interesting "thinking" here....

Why? ...because there are many more people per sq.km. in England, the part of the UK where you live, than in India. Actually, per head of population, many more people in England drive a vehicle than in India. So, how many of those English "clowns", as you put it, are "too many"? Include your relatives and friends in your calculations of course; how many of them are "easy to replace"?, given that you think there are "too many to start with". Do you think there are "too many" in India or England, given that there is a denser population for the land mass in England? You must tell us.

I get the feeling that you were "tired and emotional" when you wrote this, and you will I hope, see the error of your "thinking", which is a little bit 19th century, but which also raised its ugly head in 1930s Germany. Malthus and Eugenics, if you're wondering.

hi,

by now i would remove the infamous death road road in Bolivia. With the new road in place it's mainly a tourist attraction for mountainbike tours.

nonetheless beautiful and impressive, but IMHO due to very little other traffic probably the safest in Bolivia! :-)

cheers,
sander

The road from Msemrir to Tamtattoucht in Morocco. It links the Todra and Dades Gorge through fantastic High Atlas scenery but your car literally has to climb stairway-like slopes along very deep ravines.
I survived it but I won't do this road again!

Not at all.

England indeed has the higher population density and the safer roads. I can only comment about England in detail.

Why then are we putting so much effort into reducing road deaths by one or two a year? Will you be happy when they ban bikes to save the few hundred a year that die on them? I'm sorry you can't see the difference between targeting places you can make a difference (say exercise and healthy eating to reduce heart disease) and Eugenics. It's about getting the most effect for your effort and current spending on road safety is very poor value.

Andy

Well, 3W, your solution to road safety is a bit primitive to say the least. You advocate slaughter as a means of improving road safety, yet you don't include your friends and relatives in this carnage. Death is for others, not for you and yours. You actually say that it's cheaper to have slaughter - well it's not cheaper. The financial cost to society in many ways is huge, so better do a bit of research .Without facts you'll only get a bit confused. Governments want to improve road safety because road accidents COST money - you're away in a totally crazy direction, believing the exact opposite of the truth.:scooter:

You will know of course that in India 80% of accidents involve a moto, so your methods will result in many more rider deaths. I don't think you've thought this through at all? You want us to go back a hundred years. That's not good.

:mchappy:

This thread is heading off topic, keep it on track and start a new thread about some of this other stuff ;)

Cheers
TravellingStrom

I didn't see a solution is what Andy was saying anyway - I felt he was merely observing that the current direction of safety research in the UK will by, its very nature, be a law of diminishing returns.

The missing moral 'piece' in this thread might be 'how can the developed world continue to spend hugely on their own road safety efforts when the Developing world is estimated to be facing a road casualty disaster that we could be helping them to avoid (Web: India/150,000pa deaths by 2015) rather than spending millions of pounds fiddling with speedbumps in Oxfordshire?' There is that better?

I gotta agree. It isn't even that dangerous for mountain bikers-- of the thousands of tours I've only head of one tourist death.

I even doubt that the Yungas road was any more / less dangerous than any mountain road in Bolivia/Peru/Ecuador.

The new road to Machu Picchu was much scarier than the (old) yungas, IMO. The New Yungas is a beautiful high speed curvy road.

I'm particularly bitter about the Yungas as I spent $50 USD (3 or so days worth of accomidations in La Paz) on a mountain bike tour of it. While it was fun, not even close to worth the expense. $50 is a ton in bolivia!!

Yes big nursey!
:mchappy:

Good man! Don't pay people to do what you can do better yourself.:thumbup1:

The first part of the solution is to look at the problem. When banging your head against a brick wall it's better to stop, then consider the door, ladders, pick axe, dynamite, a helmet etc. Banging your head harder seems to be the only solution currently allowed to be thought about though. :offtopic:

Totally agree that for a tenth of our road safety budget we could save thousands in India and still have a few quid to help a few people nearer home too. I'm sure our old armco might be useful somewhere if we'd just ship it and see it installed? That'd be moving cash from one budget to another though, something else that upsets the status quo, although what Francis Rossi has to do with.....further :offtopic:.

Still don't think the A44 is really in that bad in the scheme of things though.

Andy

I would like to nominate a stretch of 'road' that is not listed here...
South of Mendoza in Argentina, about 130km's, just after San Carlos on your way to Bariloche, the famous Ruta 40 turns into gravel. Not dirt, gravel. Before today I had the joy of saying I've never come off a motorbike, something I was quite proud of, today I popped my cherry so to speak... Going 65 km/ph, which is not fast at all, I got serious speed wobbles, can't explain what happened next but basically the front wheel stopped and the rest of us kept going, an d my bike did several somersaults and landed on me, great fun altogether. I walked away with just a few scratches but the bike had to be trucked back to Mendoza for some expensive repairs over the next few days, but my pride is the most hurt. People beware Ruta 40...
IronArse, formerly Jagermini

Hope you're still going strong man, haha! :scooter:

haha, not a goner yet. again though, no quoting on that. and the driveshaft has just gone. and there may be a problem with the gearbox, its making bad crunching noises. and our stove is broken and the tent poles have snapped, and we have no passports. but we are still alive!!! woop!!