5 of the Scariest Streets in the World

Five routes that put the New Jersey Turnpike to shame.

1. WINSTON CHURCHILL AVENUE

Start your vacation to sunny Gibraltar by white-knuckling it from the airport. The peninsula’s busiest road intersects the airport’s runway, where two flimsy barriers halt traffic whenever a plane takes off or lands.

2. NORTH YUNGAS ROAD

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This mountain pass, nicknamed the Road of Death, earned its moniker for being a two-way road that’s only one car wide. Connecting the Amazon rainforest to northern Bolivia, Yungas is plagued by rain, fog, rockfalls, and mudslides. Oh, and don’t forget the 1800-foot cliff with no guardrails!

3. TRANS-SAHARA HIGHWAY

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If you love the feel of a smooth Interstate but wish more parts were swallowed in sand dunes, we recommend you check out the Trans-Sahara Highway! Stretching 2800 miles through the hottest desert in the world, finding a gas station on this route between the Mediterranean and Nigeria is almost as easy as finding water.

4. THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT

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Get meta in Swindon, England, where five mini roundabouts are tucked inside one larger round-about. Traffic runs clockwise on all five circles, but counterclockwise on the inner loop—an obvious attempt by Britain’s Department for Transport to weed out terrified tourists.

5. THE ROADS OF HAWAI’I VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK

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Home to Mauna Loa (the world’s largest active volcano) and Kilauea (one of the world’s most active volcanoes), the park regularly closes its roads due to—you guessed it!—volcanic activity. Lava occasionally spills across the park’s blacktop, depositing lumpy rivers of solid rock.

This story originally appeared in mental_floss magazine. Subscribe to our print edition here and our iPad edition here.