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In Britain we have it pretty good as far as roads go. Since the Romans we’ve enjoyed pretty good transport links and we’re a fairly flat country which only helps matters. Yet we still enjoy complaining about pot holes and uneven paving stones. To put things into perspective you need to look at how bad roads really can be, roads that will not only make your car insurance sky rocket but put your life insurance to good use too.
Bolivia’s “Road of Death”
Imagine a narrow rocky road far from any populated area with traffic travelling on both sides that spans 3,600 meters. Now imagine that on one side of the road is a solid rock wall and the other side is a sheer drop of 800 meters. This road is the epitome of the phrase “between a rock and hard place” and is responsible for a number of deaths every week and between 200 and 300 deaths each year.
What makes this road even worse is that there are no alternative routes, as such this is used by vans and trucks regularly. The road even looks intimidating as it is littered with crosses to mark the locations of tragic accidents which have ended in deaths.
The BBC’s correspondent to the area once recalled: “Perched on hairpin bends over dizzying precipices, crosses and stone cairns mark the places where travelers’ prayers went unheeded. Where, for someone - the road ended.
But even these stark warnings are all too often ignored. As first one - and then a second impatient motorist - overtook our car on the ravine side of the road, my own driver - who hardly ever spoke a word and only then in his native Aymara - intoned loudly, eerily and in perfect English... ‘You will die.’”
China’s Guoliang Tunnel in the Taihang mountains
Mountain side roads seem terrifying but are often necessary, however, a road in China takes terrifying roads to a new high up and jagged rock filled level. This road isn’t as dangerous to your life as the Bolivian “road of death” but is certainly likely to cause serious damage if you don’t keep your eye on the ball at all times.
This path is a tunnel road that runs through the side of the 2,000 meters tall mountain with twenty to thirty “windows” that are flanked by jagged rocks and allow you to look at the intimidating sheer drop just inches away.
The road was built by the villagers of a nearby town: "Before 1972, the path chiseled into the rock used to be the only access linking the village with the outside world. Then the villagers decided to dig a tunnel through the rocky cliff. Led by Shen Mingxin, head of the village, they sold goats and herbs to buy hammers and steel tools. Thirteen strong villagers began the project. It took them five years to finish the 1,200-metre-long tunnel which is about 5 meters high and 4 meters wide. Some of the villagers even gave their lives to it. On May 1, 1977, the tunnel was opened to traffic."
Because of its handmade quality the walls of this tunnel are jagged and uneven making it a likely way to scar up the paint job on your car or even worse.
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