What's The Worst Road You've Ever Driven On?

"Daanish D'souza" (daanishdsouza)
12/16/2013 at 01:34 • Filed to: None

Christmas is approaching, and that means I have to go down to India to see the family. It also means that I have to once again drive this dreadful highway. This is the Mumbai-Pune expressway, the single worst road I've ever been on. The cat's eyes don't reflect, the trucks don't have half their lights on, they all have silly clown horns, and lanes, well, those are another tale altogether. Mangled pieces of former trucks litter the side to serve as a warning to all those on this deadly road. God forbid it be raining when you're travelling along.

This isn't the same road, but its pretty much the exact same experience.

What's the worst road you've experienced?

DISCUSSION (30)

Jay Lauer > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 01:44

Kinja'd!!!

I-70 between Kansas City and Denver. 600 miles of nothing, nobody, and nowhere.

E30Joe drives a Subaru > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 01:44

94 through North Dakota, it travels perfectly East/West for over 350 miles. Literally it does not turn for over 350 miles. And there is nothing to look at, and not even a tree to get in the way of it. It's PERFECTLY FLAT. It's awful, makes 4 hours feel like 50.

Daanish D'souza > Jay Lauer
12/16/2013 at 01:50

Christ almighty that sounds painfully boring.

Daanish D'souza > E30Joe drives a Subaru
12/16/2013 at 01:53

At least you get to see the world's largest buffalo!

MtrRider Just Wants Doritos > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 01:57

I-5 though LA is pretty fucked up...

The Transporter > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 02:08

Rte. Irish, Baghdad, Iraq. They call it "RPG Alley" for a reason.

Supreme Kiwi Zorro > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 02:11

Kinja'd!!!

Being in Manhattan during the MTA strike made gridlock traffic jams across Los Angeles and Rome look like nothing in comparison. My family and I had to be in Manhattan during that time, and it took about two hours to drive across the Manhattan bridge. Another hour to find a parking space.

cardboardarmor > MtrRider Just Wants Doritos
12/16/2013 at 02:32

Was about to put down I-5 but I'm glad to see someone beat me to it.

The 101 runs a close second.

Zipppy, Mazdurp builder, Probeski owner and former ricerboy > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 02:47

The 416 in the outskirts of the Ottawa area in the middle of the night, deserted, dark, loads of cops speedtrapping.

MtrRider Just Wants Doritos > cardboardarmor
12/16/2013 at 03:02

The 101 through the beach cities is an awful crawl. The open, 2 lane parts of it are great though. The 5 just sucks, period.

Satoshi "Zipang" Katsura > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 03:13

Military Road that runs along the I-5 (Puget Sound, WA) corridor. Could have been a nice pass road if it wasn't littered with so many intersections to I-5!

JDMatt > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 03:29

The 101/80 within San Francisco. not enough lanes for the amount of traffic it handles.

Pitchblende > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 06:00

The main roads through Lima, Peru. Not driven them myself, certainly wouldn't recommend it, let a local take the risk. Driving in Lima means using your horn more than your accelerator, changing lanes as often as possible with no warning and no actual need and no worrying about a little bumper grinding, its a good excuse to shout at people. At least two thirds of traffic is taxis, crappy Diahatsus, and you thought the taxi drivers in your town were bad.

sadfasdf > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 07:05

Beijing, 3rd ring road, northwest corner near Renmin University. I ride a bicycle, so I don't get up on the actual elevated roadway (which I'm sure is just fine, every other section I've been on is), but the frontage roads.

Besides the usual bullshit of guys on cargo trikes riding the wrong way way too goddamn fast, there's a mix of overly cautious and hesitant merging and utterly reckless and oblivious merging.

There's also 1 inch thick steel plates laid down over what I presume are holes in the ground. If you happen to be riding alongside them, and a driver decides he wants to be in the space you're occupying, you may end up having to mount that plate at a disadvantageous angle. Utterly terrifying considering you've probably got more traffic behind you that might not stop if you fall. (Because clearly their phone calls are more important.)

In the evening, particularly on the eastbound side, it's the worst. There are four lanes in the frontage road, including the bike lane. There is ZERO legal parking on this road. But that doesn't stop almost the entirety of the bike lane (and a large fraction of the sidewalks) from being used as parking. But it gets better.

In a few areas, you get people double-parking, bringing the available lanes for traffic down to 2. And sometimes they'll triple-park. A busy four-lane road is reduced to one, so that some fat middle aged Audi driver can pick up his mistress at the KTV...without bothering to drive the 20 or 30 yards further he'd have had to go to only DOUBLE-park.

I changed routes for my commute to one that's almost a mile longer, but takes 10 minutes less (due not only to traffic but fewer and shorter stop lights).

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 07:22

Signage: Boston

Creepiest had to be route 11 15 north of Harrisburg. So many Amish and porn stores. Also signs every half mile telling you how far away from Harrisburg you are. If Harrisburg is the highlight where the fuck am I going.

thebigbossyboss > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 07:40

Braid St. in New Westminster BC south of Brunette. Makes you feel like you`re in a third world country, because your stuck in traffic, there is tons of trucks since your in the middle of an industrial park. At one end of the street is an intersection with 4 railroad tracks and a really busy road. At the other end is a one lane bridge. The line for the intersection backs up over the one lane bridge, thus blocking the other direction. It;a hopeless.

Bad Idea Hat > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 08:11

I-675 around Dayton, Ohio. The normal unofficial rules of maintaining the traffic flow leave you going a minimum of 80 with people who can't handle that speed. Signals are nonexistant. Highway maintenance was faltering in 2005, and only seems to have gotten worse since the city has gone downhill. I spent many an hour in traffic jams due to a single car on the side of the road, broken down. There's a hillside that seemed to catch fire every summer, which is funny considering it's only the size of a large backyard. The best part is the random crazy stuff you see, like the guy going 25 on the highway at night I saw once. I avoid 675 if I can.

Sn210 > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 09:05

Road to Hana, anyone? It's a road trip around Maui, Hawaii. It includes one lane blind turns which require you to sound your horn, a stretch of cattle road, and tourist vs. local action. It's both the best road and the worst road at the same time.

willkinton247 > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 10:52

The Capital Beltway.

Saabaru > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 11:55

Nearly every road in iowa. So boring.

911e46z06 > Daanish D'souza
12/16/2013 at 23:21

Tie between the downtowns of various big Latin American cities. Guatemala City, Panama City, San Jose, Mexico DF, Managua. I've driven in these, and they've all been fucking nightmares.

manifold engines > Jay Lauer
12/18/2013 at 01:42

Try it on a motorcycle, in the summer, with a soon to be ex....

4thwall > Daanish D'souza
12/18/2013 at 18:21

Driving to my wife's village in central China.
Its a tea growing village high in the mountain and when I went there I was the first foreigner to every go.
They had only just had a dirt road cut in a few months prior.
Before that the only way up was by foot.
Single lane, shoddily built dirt road (and I mean dirt, no road base or gravel) with a near vertical drop to one side and in a car driven by my very drunk and poor eye sighted brother in law.
After a while I took over, and let me tell you VW Santana's are not made for that.
Beautiful place though.

Kinja'd!!!

4thwall > sadfasdf
12/18/2013 at 18:29

I was at the Beijing sports university in 2000.
I used to ride a bike the first year I was there.
Second day in, I come to the lights outside of Qing Hua university (next to the old summer palace), and there is an old lady screaming at the back of a bus.
Got closer, her bike is under the back wheel.
Got closer, her grandchild is on the back of the bike, in one of those stupid child seats, under the back wheel.
Horrific.
The worst part?
The bike tracks and foot prints through the puddle of blood.
Everyone just kept on going.
Death means very little over there.
In the first three years of the seven years I lived there I stopped counting at 27 horrific deaths I personally witnessed on the roads.
Zero exaggeration.
When you've got a city with the population of Australia, you have to develop very thick skin.

sadfasdf > 4thwall
12/18/2013 at 21:19

I don't think I've witnessed any deaths, except for a dog. I did see the aftermath of a fatal accident. There was a cab parked in the middle of a small intersection near Tuanjiehu. In front of the cab was a smashed E-bike lying on its side. Between the bike and the cab was a large puddle of blood. There was a girl kneeling next to the puddle, crying.

Two times at one intersection (on the same road, farther east) I saw cyclists being taken away by ambulances. They didn't look too bad. I'm guessing broken bones.

I HAVE witnessed 3 car-on-car collisions. Also a few vans (why is it always a van?) hitting those white barriers that they have keeping cars out of some bike lanes.

Oh yeah, and I got hit by a dude in a Honda Accord. His fault, waiting to cross a bike lane to get into his lane, looking only at the vehicular traffic, ignoring the bikes entirely. I got lucky in that I was almost completely uninjured due to my pedals being in exactly the right position. And he wanted ME to compensate HIM for the damage my bike did to his hood.

Also my wife's mother lost a leg when a truck backed over her cargo trike in traffic.

I read some years ago that the death rate on Chinese streets for car occupants was about 20 times that of the US. That, BTW, is about the same risk faced by motorcyclists in the US. While there are fewer unsafe cars on the streets in China, I don't think the quality of the drivers can have improved very much.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > Daanish D'souza
12/18/2013 at 22:47

495 through the Lincoln Tunnel is pretty bad. Or any road that consistently has traffic on it 24/7

GRawesome > Daanish D'souza
12/19/2013 at 11:35

The surface streets in Manhattan and surrounding area are worse then most 3rd world roads I have driven on. There is just no way they can shut down a street there for even a day to do repairs because they are so damn utilized.

62imperialcrown > Daanish D'souza
12/24/2013 at 00:02

From the I-5 border crossing to the Central de Autobuses in Tijuana, at night, after a rainstorm, in a '76 LTD. Roads are all slippery, rocky, and crumbling; mostly unlit as well. We don't make it because a half-mile from the station we encounter a puddle that's about 75 feet across. The friend whom I'm dropping off eggs me on to go through; when a '63 Chevy approaches from the other side, I tell him, "If he makes it, we'll go."

He doesn't make it.

I manage a U-turn through the edge of it and drop my now pissed-off friend ( "Lo podriamos hacer, guey" ), with apologies, at a taxista whose vehicle has better ground clearance than mine.

Start heading home from there and two blocks later the oil pressure light comes on. Pull off, straddle a sidewalk, and look underneath to see the last of the oil running out through a little gash some rock made in the oil pan.

Shit.

Curl up inside LTD and try to sleep. Mostly fail, especially after some kid comes up and tries the door. At daylight, crawl under LTD and end up using pliers, a ball-peen hammer, and a center punch to close the hole. (As nasty as the road is to drive, it's even worse to lie in with the mix of oil, mud, rocks, and whatever else is usually in a TJ gutter.) Pour in five quarts of oil, turn the key and pray.

Success. Plus the car never leaks a drop for the year I own it after that.

That was in 1987. I haven't given any of my friends rides into TJ since; and they're all sick of hearing why.

And now you probably are too.

The WB > Daanish D'souza
12/27/2013 at 12:55

Any number of "roads" that were basically horsepaths that the oilfield turned into access roads.

https://local.google.com/maps?q=32.2+N+…

Washboard, boulders, mud pits, some of the worst roads.... in the world.

But sometimes a heck of a lot of fun in a 4x4.

The WB > The Transporter
12/27/2013 at 12:55

This one definitely wins.