World's most dangerous roads

As our family’s hire car wound up Queenstown’s Remarkables, a popular skiing mountain in the New Zealand adventure capital, for the majority of the time I went back and forth between bouts of swearing and stunned silence: a response to my genuine fear of our car toppling over the mountain road’s very questionably tiny barriers, and to our death.

While this slippery, steep and extremely twisting road, which at some points also had distances of no barriers at all, in my eyes seems utterly dangerous, in the scheme of roads around the world, well it’s like the teacups at Disneyland. Because in other parts of the world (and New Zealand too), there are stretches of dirt/gravel/bitumen that pose huge threats to drivers in the form of wildlife, criminals, natural disasters and well, just really bad planning.

Here are some of the worst.

Let’s begin with another location that seems to believe that road barriers are just decorative, the Zoji La Pass in India.

Connecting two towns in the Himalayas, the road is usually closed in winter due to thick walls of ice and a higher risk of avalanches and landslides. But even in drier months, the narrow, twisting road without safety barriers elevates to 3.5km from the ground below, meaning if you take one wrong turn, well there’s not much chance of getting out of that fall alive.

This extremely busy highway between Kabul and Kandahar isn’t steep or windy, instead, it's home to huge potholes caused by the drone strikes and exploding vehicles from when the US military controlled the country.  As well as this, the area is lacking in law enforcement and literal highway robbery poses a big danger.

Stretching 2253km, the highway is often packed with traffic including 18-wheel trucks, buses and cars and it's advised to only travel during daylight hours and with armed protection.

Elevated at 4.8km, the Karakoram Highway is not only the highest paved road in the world, but the 1200km route is also one of the most dangerous.

Cutting through several mountains there are a whole host of potential life-threatening hazards for drivers to face including landslides, rock falls, avalanches, flooding, heavy snow, herds of animals, storms and ridiculously steep cliffs.

The road is so dangerous, even while constructing it in the 1960s close to 1000 workers died and since then the popular tourist route has been the scene of regular motorist fatalities.

Featured in the reality show, Ice Road Truckers, Dalton Highway is an incredibly baron stretch of road, which becomes even more dangerous during the winter months when it becomes extremely slippery and icy.

But even in summer, drivers are advised to bring survival gear as the gravel road makes driving conditions tough and with no medical facilities along the route and only three towns, being prepared is essential!

A road known to average 300 motorist and/or cyclist deaths a year, the Road of Death as it has become known isn’t one, you’ll see me driving on any time soon.

A single-lane, narrow (no wider than 3.6 metres) dirt road sits literally on the edge of the Cordillera Oriental Mountains connecting two Bolivian towns and is one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions.

Descending 3,500 metres in 64km, into the Amazon Rainforest below, the road faces constant fog, heavy rain, loose rocks, low visibility and hundreds of sharp turns, making this a road best left for thrill seekers.

Alaska ain’t got nothing on this drive. The Canning Stock Route is not only Australia’s most remote road but the world’s, spanning over 1850km and taking over three weeks to drive.

While there aren’t sheer drops, risk of avalanches or armed robbers, the road in summer is deemed too hot to attempt and even in the cooler months, experts say to travel in a convoy and to be prepared with food, water, spare parts and satellite phones just in case of a breakdown.

At 48,000km in length, the highway that stretches across North, Central and South America is not only long but dangerous in certain parts, particularly as you enter Mexico and Central America where drug cartels are known to roam.

Along with risking being an extra in a real-life version of Breaking Bad, in the Panamanian section of the highway, there are also members of rebel group, FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) which often kidnap people and hold them for ransom.

While only 4.1km long, the Passage du Gois links the island of Noirmoutier to the mainland of France and is only accessible for three hours a day (1.5 hours before low tide and 1.5 afterwards).

The rest of the time it sits below the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, so when travelling on this road, timing is everything, otherwise your car may find itself in the same murky depths as the Titanic.

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