There is a road in Bolivia that they call the most dangerous in the world. Such is its renown that tour guides offer it as a day’s adventure to risk-hungry travellers. Built by Paraguayan prisoners of war in the 1930s, it runs from the snow-capped 13,000ft peaks of Bolivia’s Cordillera Real outside the capital La Paz to the valleys of the Yungas region at 6,000ft.
The road is steep and narrow with blind bends obscured by low cloud. At the start it has a 12,000ft drop on one side. In 2002 it claimed the lives of 98 people.
Speeding drivers — some high on coca — lose control and plunge over the edge where there is no barrier and often no white line. Rescue crews are resigned to salvaging only twisted scrap from the mountainside: nobody survives the fall. Tragically, accidents sometimes involve buses and the victims are innocent passengers.
It is difficult for any road in Europe to match the Cordillera Real, but some get close. Spain is home to one of the most feared. Tourists and locals know the N340, which runs west from Malaga through the resort towns of Torremolinos, Fuengirola and Marbella, as the highway of death.
The road switches from being a dual carriageway with a speed limit of 110kph (68mph) to a narrow, twisting road. It is also the first road that many British holidaymakers find themselves on after arriving at Malaga airport and picking up their left-hand-drive hire cars.
When indecisive holidaymakers meet impatient Spaniards the result is a chaotic mix of blaring horns, tangled traffic and crunching metal. On only two stretches — one a mile long and the other 1½ miles long — 25 people were killed or seriously injured between 2001 and 2003.
But the N340 is not officially the most dangerous road for foreign tourists, and nor is Spain the most dangerous place to drive. That honour belongs to Portugal.
Portugal has the highest road death rate in the EU at 21 per 100,000 population (in 2000), more than three times the British rate.
One reason is the country’s motorways. There are 14.1 deaths per billion vehicle kilometres on Portuguese motorways, compared with just two in Britain.
One of Portugal’s most notorious motorways is the IP5. Running from Aveiro to Vilar Formoso, the IP5 provides Portugal’s main link with the rest of Europe. It is also one of the country’s most difficult highways to drive on, dropping rapidly from mountain height to sea level.
Since it was opened a decade ago, the IP5’s hairpin bends, unclear road markings and risky overtaking spots have claimed the lives of almost 400 people.
British roads are safer, but are not without their serious blackspots. EuroRAP, the AA Trust’s European road assessment programme, has produced a map indicating which UK roads represent the highest risk when weighed against the amount of traffic using them.
For the past two years the A537 running between Buxton in Derbyshire and Macclesfield in Cheshire has been the worst performer, with 303 fatal or serious accidents for every billion vehicle kilometres travelled.
