fivestar got it! The Hana highway, with a rental car with no power steering, was the most harrowing drive not caused simply by other drivers (for that,NYC Belt Parkway). The Hana Hwy was beautiful, with no warning of attractive pulloffs, and "white-knuckle" doesn't tell half the story. That's why the first stop at the end was for a "I Survived the Hana Highway" T-shirt!

How about Muholland Drive (sp?) in
Hollywood during rush hour!?!?!?!?
Pretty scary....

Amalfi Coast drive is very scary. You have no rails and the buses come very close to plunging from the cliffs into the ocean.

that's easy, driving anywhere on Nantucket Island in the middle of August: very scary!!

Visit to Stonehenge early January. Stayed in Bath and had to get back to London that night for an early a.m. business meeting. Had a rental car. Opposite side of car, opposite side of road. The fog. The fog. It came in so thick and heavy that we literally could not see other cars' headlights until they were almost past. 2 compadres fell asleep (probably a defense mechanism).

I white knuckled it all the way back on the M5.

The 20 mile logging road in the Western Sierras (CA) which leads up to Vermillion Valley Resort. One lane, steep, unpaved, winding, no guardrail, 10,000 feet passes. I prayed the entire way that we didn't meet a car coming toward us (luckily, we didn't). Vermillion Valley Resort is the most remote resort in the Sierras that you can still drive to.

I booked the stay at VVR from a website recommendation. My husband repeatedly said during our trek there, "You've got to be *****ing me."

Great place, though! You've never really seen the stars in the night sky until you've seen them from the Sierra heights.

sounds like a cool place to check out!

Oh...I meant to say the road from Marbella to Ronda, not Nerja. Nerja was easy, but need to figure out a less scary route to Ronda (or take antivertigo pills!)

Me in my youth in the backseat of the station wagon with my then-evil older brother. Any ride was harrowing in those days.

dem roads, pikes peak, hana, amalfi, yadayadayada, are nuthin to complain about. the most "harrowing" drive is always duh one to my mother-in-law's. i call it the "road to hell"!

>)

1) Icefield Parkway (Jasper NP) in a snowstorm in July! Both stunning and freaky.

2) Going To The Sun Road

3) PCH from Monterey to San Simeon one year, when trying to make a Hearst Castle tour in time. We didn't

4) Worst of all: I 95 during spring break!!!!!!

Drive up to Waimea Canyon in Kauai from Poipu with my sister. She was racing cars for a hobby with her husband and thought she was on the track. We were on the brink of being car sick, we didn't want to go past the first lookout, so missed the napili coastline.

The trip down was just as bad!! Did I mention the compact car??

Cannot tell you the road #'s, but many years ago we were in Colorado and decided to go from Cripple Creek to the Royal Gorge........well, I was navigating and said....."oh, here, let's take the scenic route"..NOT!!
I could not tell you one thing that was on that scenic route......because I literally reclined in the front seat..I would peep once in a while!!
I knew it was a seriously dangerous type of place when my DH (who loves driveing the hairpins and such) uttered.."Well, if that big a_ _ Lincoln can make it that is coming our way, surely to the dickens this big
a_ _ Cadillac can make it all the way thru this place.......just pray, baby!!"
It's no wonder they charge those big fees for rentals in Colorado!!
It was the scariest drive of my life...and I have been forever banned from reading the road map!!
He still lets me look at it.....but, takes a gander for himself these days!!

Costa Rica, from San Jose (airport) to La Fortuna (rainforest) and back... but it was SO worth it.

Best vacation EVER!!!

Any of the single track roads on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Why? They are narrow with passing spots to let oncoming traffic pass. They are on sides of mountains and cliffs, with very sharp turns. It is often raining in this area of Scotland. And! you have to watch out for the sheep roaming about.

The mountain roads that take you from Port Antonio, Jamaica into Kingston. We were vacationing in Jamaica and took these roads because the coastal road was washed out. We were trying to get to the airport to catch our flight back to th U.S.

The funny part is that we weren't even doing the driving...we had a chauffer. The drop-off in the mountains were steep and the road very curve. The only way to go around a corner was to stop and honk your horn. At times the driver had to come to screeching halts because of oncoming traffic zooming around the bends.

Even my husband who is an aggressive driver was unnerved. I was nauseated and almost threw up.

Here are my most memorably scary:

1. Newly arrived in the US in 1971, and touring New Hampshire. We took the road to the observatory at the top of Mount Washington. In a BIG Mercury station wagon. With extra-wide mirrors because we were travelling with a camping trailer. Then we were in the clouds, and couldn't see 5 feet -- not sure if that was better or worse!

2. Driving from Cape Cod to the Mass Pike on 495, "storm alley", in such torrential rain and wind that it felt unsafe to go on because I just couldn't see where I was going, and unsafe to stop because no-one could see me, either, before they would whack into my trunk.

3. Driving I95 through Virginia in a heavy snowstorm (a "storm of the century" kind), on our way to Florida(!) for a February vacation. Just one lane, kind of plowed -- off ramps untouched. DH was driving, I was co-pilot, and also trying to reassure the kids who thought this was frightening yet fun. They still remember it.

4. Driving the Dorset lanes near my family's house: mostly single-lane, high stone walls and hedges, lots of blind curves. A trip without a car coming the other way is a good one.

Fun topic!

A few years ago my husband and I drove up to SanBernadino area in May from Palm Springs (so we were in shorts ... it was 90 there) to drive along "Top of the World" drive in the Big Bear area (that's what it was called in AAA book). It was cloudy when we got there and a little rainy, but decided to go for the drive up the mountain anyway .... BIG MISTAKE! We essentially ended up driving up into a cloud and it was so foggy that we couldn't even see the front of the car! All the while trying to maneuver one hairpin turn after another ... no good area to turn around and go back since we couldn't see a thing. If that wasn't bad enough, as we reached the higher elevation we started to notice snow still on some lawns and then the rain started to turn to snow with the appearance of signs to be careful about hazardous icy roads .... and we're still taking hairpin turns. I couldn't even bear to look out the windows I was so scared ... and I had to keep quiet so my husband who was driving could keep his wits. We finally managed to drive out of the area and prompty drove back to the desert (and had a great afternoon at Joshua Tree Nat'l Park) ... I really felt like a "dumb tourist" for doing that!

1. Montego Bay to Negril, Jamaica. My husband and I sat in the back of the small bus -- I've never been so glad to NOT be able to see everything that was happening. Let's just say I now know a very real version on the game "chicken".

2. Riding in the backseat of our Suburban with my Mom at the wheel going up Twist Run Road (self explanatory) at what seemed 70 miles an hour. I thought I was going to die at the young age of 8.

Mine are:

1) The Khyber Pass from Pakistan to Afghanistan, as one poster has already mentioned. Many, many years when I was young and no one knew where Afghanistan was, I took the "local" bus - the bus driver came by to collect the tickets, all the while carelessly twirling his handgun. In those days, when an Afghani boy became a man, he was given a gun. Every man had a gun. Every man, man-boy on that slow-movign bus had a gun/rifle of some sort. I didn't think I would get out of those dry mountains alive!

2) Another trip - up in the high Himalayas on an Indian bus. The inside of the bus is full, so we had to sit on TOP of the baggage ATOP the bus. We are on the outer perimeter of the mountain road. The driver routinely drove around the bend on two wheels with my friend and me hanging onto the loose baggage for life. Meanwhile, from the crazily angled bus that threatened tilt over completely and to drop off the cliff completely, we are getting glimpses of the sheer drop down the cliffs - 1000, 2000, 3000 foot drops!

Thank goodness I'm not that young any more!