Why Doesn't Anyone Want to Fix One of America's Scariest Roads?

"The motorized tourist, reluctant to give up his back-assward view of the world, demands that the park administration pave the trails, clear out the brush, and put up guard rails... he wants luxury and convenience, and he gets it—at the cost of the wilderness."

--Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

There's a lot of dangerous infrastructure in America. This is far from the only road that causes accidents and deaths on the regular because it is in inherently unsafe or was designed for different kinds of traffic than it has now.

The fact that this road was built in the previous century makes it part of that second category.

In general, we seem unwilling to invest in American road infrastructure. I'd be willing to bet that potholes, the unexciting normal kind you don't even notice in a car, cause more loss of life and loss of money than any particular dramatic road.

My family was driving this road south from Ouray to Durango one morning when I was about 20. We got stuck in a traffic jam. Eventually we made it to the place where a car had gone over the edge the night before, and they were trying to winch it up about 1000 feet. Papers and belongings were scattered down the mountainside. It was very sad and sobering. Driving back that night in light rain was terrifying.

I drive this road regularly in the winter for backcountry skiing and I truly think there are scarier roads. Sure there is a terrifying cliff but in general it's not bad if you simply drive to the conditions.

The ten miles or so on the Aspen side of Independent Pass, when leaving town, is so much worse. It feels like a true single lane road at points with a huge cliff on one side that has the road caving in.

I really enjoyed reading about this. As a tourist, it's really easy to drive into Colorado and forget to check your route for huge altitude changes. I live in a flat place, I check roads for things like high speeds of traffic and flooding potential but it's easy to forget that sometimes I might end up driving on a cliffs edge.

Then there is also the puzzle of locals driving fast to get through the avalanche risk, while terrified tourists like myself are crawling along worried I'll go around an unknown turn too fast and shoot over the cliffs edge.

In summary I have to say it's been helpful for me to paste directions into AI tools and ask them to tell me how the drive would be during the days I'm planning to make it. Just for good measure I also ask to find local dog friendly stops along the way for food and rest room breaks.

I'm not sure if this is something work spending hundreds of millions of dollars fixing when the risks can be mitigated with some additional planning. They should probably board up that tempting cave mentioned at the bottom of the article though and improve their avalanche guns.

Probably because it doesn't need to be fixed. Not every complaint requires government intervention, which we've often see is more expensive and problematic then anything it actually solves.

Pro tip: Take a different route, or drive 15mph.

Not as scary as this: https://dot.alaska.gov/highways/dalton/

If you like cliffhanger roads, check out Adam Riemann's tour through Nepali/Indian Himalayas. I've ridden in Nepal, but not as wild a path as Adam takes here. He's a great vlogger and captures some great footage. If you have some time to spare, check it out.

https://youtu.be/c1D3RHmw7GA

I've got a Transalp over in the states now, so i'm looking forward to touring roads like the one mentioned in the article. Glad this popped up.

Scary doesn't mean deadly, this road isn't anywhere near the top of the list for most deadly roads.

Mountain driving can be scary if you are driving too fast or in bad weather. We have the Angeles Crest and Angeles Forest highway here in SoCal which is windy and has steep cliffs. Every weekend people come out with their motorcycles and sports cars and try to turn it into a race course. I remember years back a carpool van with people commuting to Cal Tech from Palmdale went over the side killing the passengers. It was during the winter and it was foggy and may have been icy too.

From the Drone angle it looks scary. But from auto drivers pov, it may not look that scary.

Only tangentially related, but I kind of miss bus plunge newspaper filler.

Leave colorado alone

There's an overpass from one side of a big-box zone to the other in my area (Brunswick road over highway 20, which is a freeway at that point). One side there's a sidewalk and on the other side there isn't. It is a classic example of what Strongtowns calls a "Stroad" and many people walk across (always the poor) on the side without sidewalks exposed to uncontrolled car entering and leaving the freeway and not expecting pedestrians. I don't know any statistics but friends of mine have been injured on it.

It would be nice to fix all the things about roads. But the road in the article sounds like should be closed and the funds used to maintain it diverted elsewhere, perhaps to fix stroads.

Before clicking, I thought this would be about the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Driving through the rockies is _terrifying_. It's not just this one road.

I used to live in Colorado. This road is awesome, utterly beautiful. It’s also not even remotely uncommon, in the sense that the central high Rocky Mountains are crisscrossed by roads like this.

In other news the ski resorts have cliffs and you can ski right off them. Also the snow is deep and it gets suddenly cold at night and that will kill you too.

Maybe they can just have a pull off where you sign a waiver if you can't answer a couple of verbal questions like "what is leftover salmon" or "which mountains are named after titties" or "what animal has two oysters" or whatever.

>and his wife refused to travel on it

Smart person, I would never travel on that road even if the long way is 8 hours longer. And driving in winter ? You have to be crazy.

Do this one weird trick to summarize the entire article. Trim the headline:

"Fix One of America's Scariest Roads?"

This is a semi-local road to me, what is amazing in the article is the difference between Switzerland and the US in how they actually care about their citizens.

America is great and fun but also brutal in how the government will actively go out of its way to deny basic living standards. From healthcare to minimum wage, they want you to die just before you reach social security age.