The world's most dangerous road

By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2006-11-15

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Forget your local road with the bad turns, the potholes or the rush-hour congestion. Some people have real road problems.

There's that awful road in Russia from Moscow to Yakutsk (near the Yakutsk end) and a scary one in Nepal heading from Katmandu toward Mount Everest, and a few other horror stories from around the world, but the road from Bolivia's capital city of La Paz to the high-Andes region of Yungas beats them all hands down.

In 1995, the Inter American Development Bank called it the most dangerous road in the world and nobody argued with them.

For most of the 40 or so miles (about 60 Km) from Coroico to La Paz the road is no more than a winding track carved out of the side of a mountain. Single-lane width, extreme drop-offs, lack of guardrails and sometimes unruly traffic compound the problem.

Incredibly, the road, despite little more than 3 meters wide for most of its lenght, is a major route for trucks and buses. Imagine heading into a curve at night, in rain and meeting a bus coming the other way!

The road drops in altitude from a little over 14,000 feet (4300 M) to just over 1,000 feet, taking it from the high Andes plains down through the rain forests to La Paz. A local rule that helps to keep some kind of order is that up-bound traffic has the right of way. This helps slow downward traffic as they go into blind turns.

The road was build during the 1930s by Paraguayan prisoners of war. A new road has been under construction for more than a decade.

Photos of the Yungas Road

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