The world’s most dangerous route is littered with memorial crosses, with the road once claiming up to 300 lives per year. Bolivia’s Yungas Road, widely known as the Death Road, is a 40-mile unpaved stretch connecting the main La Paz city and the subtropical Coroico.
The famous route was built back in the 1930s, constructed by Paraguayan prisoners of war no less. What makes the road so dangerous is the high stakes involved, one mistake and its quite literally game over.
The narrow route is just 3 metres wide, sitting on the edge of a vertical cliff face 1,000 metres above a valley. Whoever thought that was a good idea? Throw into the mix the regular amount of rain, fog and landslides, and it’s easy to see why the road is a recipe for disaster.
Even the road rules are different, with motorists forced to drive on the left in a complete contrast to the rest of Bolivia. Vehicles driving down the route do not even have the right-of-way and will occasionally need to sit on the cliff edge to allow traffic to pass.
It was once common for the route to claim the lives of anywhere between 200 and 300 people per year with many falling foul of the sheer drops. Back in 1983, a bus plunged off the side of the road, resulting in the deaths of over 100 people. The incident still stands as the single worst recorded traffic accident in the history of Bolivia.
The iconic route made a special appearance in Top Gear, with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May taking on the route during the Bolivia Special in season 14. The road continued to be the only way to drive between the two towns until 2006, when a replacement was finally considered.
The route has since been replaced by a modern two-lane highway, which carries the majority of industrial traffic. This has led to a massive reduction in the number of people lost to the road every year.
