12
Nov
You Thought Your Commute Was Bad
The road from Bolivia’s main city, La Paz, to a region known as the Yungas was built by Paraguayan prisoners of war back in the 1930s.
Many of them perished in the effort. Now it is mainly Bolivians who die on the road - in their thousands.
In 1995, the Inter American Development Bank christened it the most dangerous road in the world. And, as you start your descent, and your driver whispers a prayer, you begin to see why.
Every year it is estimated 200 to 300 people die on a stretch of road less than 50 miles long. In one year alone, 25 vehicles plunged off the road and into the ravine. That is one every two weeks.?
Nice article from the BBC. Mind you, the roads around Aberdeenshire don’t seem much better. Every weekend another 2 or 3 people are killed, and I’m not surprised. More than once I’ve been driving along an A-road at 60mph (the legal limit) and been overtaken by someone approaching a blind left hand bend. The thing is, its rarely the young inexperienced guy you might think it would be - the last one was a middle aged woman with two children on the back seat. If someone had been coming the other way (and visibility was zero) we’d all have been wiped out.
I spent 10 years driving in London, all round the M25 and up and down the UK. Every where else the bad driving seems to be deliberate-here its just a way of life - or indeed, death.
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