Some of the most dangerous roads in the world are also among the most spectacular, located in high mountain passes and remote locations throughout the globe. Of course, thanks to the tendencies of some drivers, even the most ordinary US highway can end up being dangerous too!
The roads which are considered the most dangerous in the world often make for exciting, if slightly scary, journeys, so it is hardly surprising that TV producers like the idea of making programs about tackling these risky routes.
The original Top Gear trio—Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May—have taken on some of the most treacherous roads in the world for their popular TV show. But there are some roads that are so perilous that even the Top Gear guys shy away from taking them on.
From South America to the Indian subcontinent and Asia, and even the mountains of Europe, drivers have enjoyed the challenge of taking on some of the most dangerous roads in existence. Of course, for the people who live in the area, these treacherous routes are simply how they get from one place to another.
Some of these roads did make a starring role in Top Gear specials, but some are considered too dangerous even by television producers. Would you be brave enough to take on any of the hazardous routes on the list below?
20 Too Scary: Snail Pass, Argentina
The Snail Pass, or the Paso de los Libertadores as it is known officially, is located on the mountainous border between Chile and Argentina in South America. On the Chilean side, a dizzying series of sharp and steep hairpin bends take drivers to an altitude of 3,200 meters, where drivers should at least pause for a moment to enjoy the spectacular view over the surrounding scenery before they disappear into the Cristo Redentor tunnel at the peak. The Snail Pass also happens to be one of the busiest roads in South America, and the extra traffic makes the route even more challenging.
19 Too Scary: D915, Turkey
The D915 may not have the most exciting name, but this road in Turkey makes for quite an exhilarating drive. Located in the country’s Trabzon province, it connects the city of Bayburt with a small town named Of, on the Black Coast.
The road is 65 miles long, with 29 steep hairpin bends, all of which have sheer drops and no guardrails to prevent cars from plummeting off the side!
The road is even more treacherous in winter due to extreme blizzards. It was even named the most dangerous road in the world in 2016, one hundred years after it was constructed by Russian soldiers.
18 Too Scary: Col du Chaussy, France
Unsurprisingly, many of the most dangerous roads in the world are in mountainous areas, and the Col du Chaussy in France is no exception. Located in the Alpine region of south-east France, the climb on the Col du Chaussy starts with a series of 17 hairpins in two miles. These hairpins, called the Les Lacets de Montvernier, seem to be balanced on the mountainside and even if you get past them, drivers still have to negotiate a steep climb to the summit. Amazingly, this road has also featured in the world-famous Tour de France and has always proven a challenge even to professional cyclists.
17 Too Scary: Kahekili Highway, Hawaii
Remote areas of the Hawaiian Islands are home to roads which are dangerous and beautiful in equal measure. One of the most treacherous is the Kahekili Highway, which is actually a one-lane, roughly-paved road on Maui, and nothing like a highway at all! Running for 20 miles between Kapalua and Wailuku, the Kahekili Highway has steep cliffs on one side and a sheer, very long drop on the other, with no guardrails to keep drivers safe. The road becomes even more dangerous after periods of heavy rain, when it can be made even more treacherous by mudslides and falling rocks.
16 Too Scary: Canon del Pato, Peru
The Canon del Pato, which translates into English as Duck Canyon, is a very narrow mountain road in Peru that has been chipped out of the solid rock. This unpaved road, which runs between the village of Yuracmarca and the Calipuy National Reservation, has 35 one-lane tunnels which have no lights and often emerges from the claustrophobic walls of the canyon to reveal steep drops of over 1,000 meters. The scary driving experience clearly frightened the Top Gear crew, and it probably doesn't help that the Canon del Pato eventually joins Ruta 3N in Peru, another of the most dangerous roads in the world.
15 Too Scary: Kinnaur Road, India
The so-called Kinnaur Road in India runs through one of the most remote areas of India, through the mountains around the Baspa river gorge in the breath-taking and treacherous Sangla Valley. At 4,000 meters in altitude, the road is actually closed for six months of the year because of heavy snowfall, but even in the spring and summer months, the route should be handled with extreme caution. The road is carved into the side of a sheer rock face, with a steep drop on the other side down into the river valley bottom below. Be careful not to get distracted by the stunning views as you drive this dangerous road!
14 Too Scary: Skippers Canyon, New Zealand
One of the main reasons that Skippers Canyon in New Zealand is one of the most dangerous roads is that it wasn’t even built for cars in the first place.
Constructed in the 1890s, the road was used as a path for miners and horses during the South Island’s gold rush and is now home to some of the best viewpoints in New Zealand.
This one-track, unpaved road, with sharp bends and steep cliffs, is so dangerous that rental car companies won’t honor your insurance if you take your vehicle into Skippers Canyon, and drivers can find themselves having to back up for hundreds of meters of they meet traffic from the opposite direction.
13 Too Scary: Camino a Salinas, Peru
Officially known as Ruta 34C, the Camino a Salinas is another dangerous road found in the mountains of Peru.
Part of the danger of this one-track route is that the views are so stunning, drivers can easily find themselves distracted—and the Camino a Salinas is a road that definitely demands 100% of a motorist's attention.
This high mountain road, between the city of Arequipa and Lake Salinas—the salt lake which gives the route its name—is bordered in several places by drops of many hundreds of feet, with no guardrails in place to keep you on the right path should your attention waver for a second.
12 Too Scary: Guoliang Tunnel Road, China
Tunnel roads, carved into and through steep rock cliffs, are pretty common in the mountainous areas of China, but the Guoliang Tunnel Road is one of the most iconic, and dangerous, of this kind of route. It is less than a mile in length but is also just 16 feet tall and a tiny 13 feet wide. The road took five years to build, and was eventually opened to traffic in 1977. Before the road was opened, the only way to reach the tiny village of Guoliang was via a vertigo-inducing string of paths and ladders, suspended high on the sides of the gorge.
11 Too Scary: Halsema Highway, Philippines
The 150-mile Halsema Highway in the Philippines has actually improved its safety in recent years, thanks to a program to pave the whole stretch of the route between Baguio City and Bontoc.
The high mountain pass, with its sharp turns and steep drops, is made all the more dangerous, however, by the large amount of traffic which uses the route every day.
The Halsema Highway is particularly popular with tourists and speeding bus drivers who often forget that not everyone knows the road as well as they do. The weather in this area can add to the danger, with heavy moisture common in the winter and thick fog present throughout the year.
10 Conquered: Yungas Road, Bolivia
The last ten roads may have been too dangerous for the Top Gear team, but Clarkson, May, and Hammond took on more than their fair share of treacherous journeys during their 12 years together presenting the BBC show. One of the most memorable episodes was when the trio took on the infamous Yungas Road in Bolivia, which winds its way through the mountains to the capital of La Paz. Top Gear took on the Yungas Road in 2009 and saw for themselves just why it is so dangerous. Just one look at a photograph of the road is enough to cause a bit of vertigo.
9 Conquered: Shipki La Pass, India
In the Top Gear India Special of 2011, the presenters took on the Shipki La Pass in the mountains on the border with China. This rough-and-ready road took some serious skill to negotiate, and the team had to time their visit carefully, as the high mountain pass is situated at an altitude of 13,000 feet and becomes blocked by snow for much of the year. However, driving the Shipki La Pass was a piece of cake for the Top Gear boys compared to their poor efforts at diplomacy, which managed to cause a huge offense in India after the show was screened.
8 Conquered: Ushuaia, Argentina
The guys on the Top Gear team are no strangers to controversy, and the Patagonia Special, which was filmed and screened in 2014, was perhaps one of their most dangerous expeditions.
The road to Ushuaia, at the very southern tip of Argentina, is no picnic, being essentially a rough terrain track leading to a dead-end at the very edge of the South American continent.
But it has to be said that Clarkson and the other presenters brought on most of the trouble themselves by fitting one of their cars with a license plate referencing the Falklands conflict between the UK and Argentina back in 1982.
7 Conquered: Fairy Meadows Road, Pakistan
Fairy Meadows Road sounds like a quiet country lane, not one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Yet this rocky mountain route in Pakistan, which runs for about ten miles to the remote village of Tato, reaches an altitude of over 3,000 meters with twisting hairpin bends and steep drops on both sides.
It’s not just locals who drive this road, but also mountaineers who are heading to climb Nanga Parbat, the ninth-highest mountain in the world.
The Top Gear presenters took on the Fairy Meadows Road as part of their India Special, as they explored throughout the Indian Subcontinent on four wheels.
6 Conquered: Kurdistan to Palestine
The Top Gear Middle East Special was first screened, appropriately enough, at Christmas 2010. The timing was appropriate because the trio made a 1,200-mile journey from Iraqi Kurdistan to the very biblical town of Bethlehem in Palestine. Although some of the roads they drove on weren’t in the best condition—and neither were the cars they were driving—it was more the places they were driving through that posed a danger to the team. Crossing borders in the Middle East was a tricky proposition, and the countries and cities they visited, including Aleppo and Damascus, had been plagued by violent problems for years.
5 Conquered: Black Mountain Road, Wales
This next entry on the list just goes to show that the Top Gear team didn’t need to go to exotic and far-flung locations to find challenging roads to drive. The A4069 in Wales, part of the UK, is also known as Black Mountain Road, but it has been used so frequently for Top Gear test drives that some fans even call it the Top Gear Road! Its twists and turns may be more gentle than those seen on some of the dangerous roads on this list, but its starring role on the TV show means that it has become packed with visiting (oblivious) motorists wanting to re-create test drives of their own.
4 Conquered: North Pole
Sometimes, the most dangerous roads are the roads that aren’t even there. The Top Gear presenters took on one of their greatest challenges when they decided to try and drive to the North Pole.
The team turned the treacherous drive into a race between Clarkson and May, who chose to travel by car, and Richard Hammond, who elected to try and beat his co-presenters to the North Pole by using a dog sled instead.
Despite some scary moments involving the thickness of the ice and the weight of the cars they were driving, Clarkson and May made it to the Pole first.
3 Conquered: The Nile
If the team went a little crazy by trying to drive across the Arctic ice, that was nothing compared with their Africa Special in 2013, which saw the team trying to drive to the source of the River Nile.
The main problem with trying to drive to the source of a river is that sometimes the river is the road.
At one point, the trio came to a crocodile-infested river with no possible way of crossing. Rather than take a long detour out of their way, they crafted a home-made raft to float themselves and their vehicles across the fast-running water.
2 Conquered: Urban Streets In Paris
Some urban streets can be just as dangerous as dizzying mountain passes, Arctic ice, and predator-infested African rivers. If anyone has ever driven around the streets of the French capital at rush hour, they will know that these urban roads can be just as dangerous as those in more remote locations. The Top Gear team took on the Parisian traffic in their Supercars Do France special, which saw them attempt to drive a Pagani Zonda, a Ferrari F430, and a Ford GT around one of the most chaotic roundabouts in the world, at the famous Arc de Triomphe monument.
1 Attempted: Bolivia to Chile
Believe it or not, the Yungas Road was not the most dangerous route that Clarkson, May, and Hammond tackled on their South American visit in 2009. In deciding how they were going to drive from Bolivia to Chile, the trio decided to take the most direct route over the border, which also happened to climb straight over the active Gullatiri volcano at an altitude of more than 17,200 feet. In fact, the team never made it over the challenging road, as they all started to suffer from altitude sickness, and their cars also responded very badly to the lack of oxygen.
Sources: dangerousroads.org, interestingengineering.com, and grandtournation.com.