Background: Don't expect to find guardrails while traveling along the Yungas Road from La Paz to Coroico in western Bolivia. The road ranges in elevation from 4000 feet to more than 15,000 feet and is as narrow as 10 feet in some sections.
How It's Unique: This notorious road has earned the nickname Road of Death, thanks to the countless accidents that have occurred on it. Two-thousand-foot drops are not uncommon as the Yungas snakes through Bolivia's wilderness. "The history of these things, typically, is that you have a trail, like a donkey trail, that becomes the road," Mahmassani tells PM. "It's essentially the path of least resistance." Widening this road would be a massive project, both environmentally and financially, that would involve cutting and removing tons of mountainside.
Excerpt from http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/architecture/4338387
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