Roads (Hopefully) Less Traveled

Shanghai's Puxi Viaduct, used by thousands of motorists each hour, has five levels of bridges connecting two of the city's busiest highways.

The great Newmark’s Door pointed me to “The 19 Most Dangerous and Complex Roads in the World” on waze.com. The feature presents photos and descriptions of some of the most treacherous driving you can imagine.

Only one of the killer pathways is here in the U.S.–Los Angeles’ Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange, an exhaustingly complicated maze that doesn’t seem possible outside of a video game. Perhaps the one that makes me the most vertiginous is Bolivia’s North Yungas Road (appropriately dubbed the “Road of Death“). An excerpt from the feature about this South American highway to hell:

“Famous for its extreme danger, it was christened as the ‘world’s most dangerous road’ in 1995 by the Inter-American Development Bank. The single-lane width, extreme drop offs, and lack of guardrails, only add to the danger lurking behind. Further, the fog and rain can make visibility poor and the road surface muddy, loosening rocks from the hillsides above. It is estimated that 200 to 300 travelers are killed per year on this treacherous road.”

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