Traveling across this vast world is getting easier and easier everyday thanks to the efforts of some truly intrepid (or truly daft) engineers. Since the beginning of time, these crazy people have worked some real magic with numbers, architecture, and engineering to span some really jaw-dropping (and pants wetting) expanses. Sure, people have to get from one place to another, but looking at some of these bridges you have to wonder if there wasn’t a better direction that could have been taken. Here, for your consideration, are 15 of the world’s scariest bridges.
1. Royal Gorge Bridge, Colorado
Coming up on nearly 100 years in use, the Royal Gorge Bridge was built on the cheap in 1929. Up until the turn of the new millennium, this bad boy was the highest suspension bridge in the world, dangling precariously 956 feet above the Arkansas River.
Dummies from across the world have flocked to the bridge to bungee jump or parachute from the bridge, including one poor fool, “in a wingsuit who attempted to fly over the bridge in 2003 but ran into a pylon, and was instantly killed.”
2. Vitim River Bridge, Siberia
This converted train bridge was built across one of Russia’s busiest tributaries, the Lena River. Covered in slick ice most of the year, the six feet wide bridge can barely fit one car at a time.
The Vitim River Bridge is considered so treacherous that simply getting across it alive is an accomplishment. Seriously, “the 34 people who have done it created their own Facebook page.”
3. Bamboo Bridge, Cambodia
Located in Kampong Cham, a city in the East part of Cambodia, the Bamboo Bridge is the major means of access to a nearby island in the dryer seasons of the year.
Even crazier, the Bamboo Bridge is rebuilt every year and is expected to hold hundreds of people at any given time. “The bridge has a framework made of bamboo sticks and a carpet of several layers of canes cut in halves extends over it, absorbing the impact of the vehicles.” Would you risk a crossing?
