Roads/highways you feel unsafe driving on

[Truvelo]

Rough neighborhoods don't bother as I have this fitted to my car.

What does scare me now is seeing a sign containing an animal with antlers. I used to like zooming along remote roads at night when there's no traffic to get in the way but after hitting a deer I now prefer to drive during the day.

[kphoger]

The reply above was one of the examples. Another example was that I had a beer bottle thrown at me on US-50 in DC.

I've had a beer bottle thrown at me while I was waiting for a bus in Geneva, Illinois.  Didn't make me stop going to Geneva.

[formulanone]

So the keyboard warriors never had anything bad happen while driving through sketchy neighborhoods? Okay, then, I have the worst luck in the world.

About 20 years ago, a crackhead touched my car at 2am while waiting for a red light. I honked, he moved away, and nearly was hit (well, from my perspective) by oncomming traffic. I've been yelled or jeered at, but I just ignore them.

That's the worst I've dealt with. Big deal...I'm not inherently scared of country nor city nor color of skin.

[agentsteel53]

I've been actually mugged, and I didn't think it indicative of my need to avoid large swaths of land.

[Alps]

Empty lots and abandoned houses. People on the street at 10 AM just... there, not headed anywhere, and poorly dressed. No traffic besides your own car. Nothing at all looks new, and bars on all the windows.

sounds like most of downtown Detroit.

Yes, another place where I kept moving. Though I wouldn't say "downtown," but rather some of the neighborhoods around it, particularly to the north/east.

US-40 through Baltimore, down Orleans Street.  That is a scary neighborhood.  Gets even worse going up Ensor Street.

None of the highways going through more "depressed" areas of Oregon really frighten me that much, though I did have a bum yell at me at OR-99 and Chambers Street in West Eugene while on my Honda scooter once.  (Eugene has some really angry and aggressive bums.  Vastly worse than Portland ones.)

I drive US 40 a lot through Baltimore. I've even been on parallel and connecting streets. Honestly, it's really not that bad for the most part to the east. The bad stuff is to the west mostly.

Do you mind sharing what happened? I'd like to think I'm not completely oblivious, but maybe we're all missing something.

The reply above was one of the examples. Another example was that I had a beer bottle thrown at me on US-50 in DC.

Ah, DC. I found US 1 to be iffy, although OK during the day. (A homeless man pointed out that he, my friend, and I were the only three white people on the east side. My friend and I had lunch there, the place entirely barred/boarded to prevent vandalism, but good food and we were never threatened.)

[Duke87]

Driving through bad neighborhoods: roll up the windows and don't make eye contact with anyone.

Not unlike the policy for walking through bad neighborhoods: walk with determination and purpose, keep a tough emotionless look on your face, and don't make eye contact with anyone. Just basically give off an air of "don't fuck with me" and no one will. Though this is admittedly tougher to do in office clothes, as my job sometimes demands of me.

[Some_Person]

US 22 (Lehigh Valley Thruway) in PA. Its a 4 lane freeway spanning the Lehigh Valley with a 55mph speed limit and it has a jersey barrier the entire way, making the left lane feel pretty unsafe at some curvy points, and it also has the worst traffic and an AADT of 70,000-95,000 at its worst areas. Heres a few examples of how merging/exiting makes rush hour terrible:
http://goo.gl/maps/iMMoF
http://goo.gl/maps/N8V0d
Notice how close some interchanges are to each other

[roadman65]

All the Charleston, SC Bridges when its windy!

[roadman]

Any freeway when it's raining.  Semis kick up a huge amount of mist as do SUVs, compromising visibility.

Beginning in the early 2000s, Massachusetts freeways that have been resurfaced since then use open graded friction course and, more recently, gap graded friction course pavements.  Makes a huge difference in rainy weather, but I wouldn't try applying thermoplastic markings on it (as MassHighway discovered the hard way - think snowplows).

[hbelkins]

I'm noticing two distinctly different viewpoints on this thread.

One involves the road itself; the other involves the neighborhood the road passes through.

I don't know that I have ever felt unsafe on a road due to the road itself or its geometrics, design, etc.

I have felt unsafe on some roads due to the amount and type of traffic on them, and also due to the neighborhood, but never solely because of the road.

[flowmotion]

CA-17 over the Santa Cruz mountains -- I've always felt like a dodged a bullet after making over to the other side. It's a narrow, windy two-lane expressway with grade crossings & heavy traffic that will go from 65 MPH to 0 in an instant.

[SidS1045]

Beginning in the early 2000s, Massachusetts freeways that have been resurfaced since then use open graded friction course and, more recently, gap graded friction course pavements.  Makes a huge difference in rainy weather, but I wouldn't try applying thermoplastic markings on it (as MassHighway discovered the hard way - think snowplows).

Ah yes, the famous "black popcorn."

[theline]

My scariest drive was on the Indiana Toll Road in Laporte County during one of the infamous "lake effect" snows. Total white-out, so I wasn't sure if I was on the road or not. Trying to keep the barely pink taillights of the semi ahead in sight. Trying to not get too close, lest I become embedded in its undercarriage.

The worst was being passed by another semi whose driver thought we were going too slow. At that point, for what seems like forever, even the pink lights disappeared and I had to take it on faith the road didn't curve. We couldn't pull over either or we'd become sitting ducks.

[Revive 755]

* CA 9 through that Redwoods state park - too winding, no shoulders, and too many bicyclists.

* The two lane section of US 12 not too far north of I-43 - might have just been tired the night I drove this section, or had higher expectations for a US route, but seemed to be substandard and over capacity.

* US 20 in Illinois from Marengo to IL 47 - needs wider shoulders, and almost every intersection seems to be on a curve, a hill, or both.

[cpzilliacus]

Va. 56 between Steeles Tavern and the crest of the Blue Ridge (at the Blue Ridge Parkway).  A narrow, twisting road, not much fun to drive even in good weather.  Has the "look and feel" of a road with a route number greater than or equal to 600, not a primary system highway.

I-68 between Finzel and Hancock on a spring evening, when weather moved in and the clouds descended to some level lower than the ridge crests, resulting in extremely dense fog.

[NYYPhil777]

Speaking of dangerous and desolate places (which this thread started out with), I'd say Downtown St. Louis is getting more ghetto than East St. Louis. Grand Avenue from I-70 to the UMSL area is very ghetto, and a lot of poor housing can be found near I-70 going into downtown STL.

[kphoger]

This year:  Coahuila state highway 102 from General Cepeda to Parras de la Fuente

I judged it ahead of time to be a decent highway based on Panaramio photos like this and this.  It turns out that much of the road between Panaramio shots is a giant sea of potholes–literally impossible to avoid in many places, even by driving on the wrong side of the road, and certainly difficult to avoid in most places at anything over 30 mph.  If I hadn't replaced our minivan's tires before leaving for our trip, I don't think we would have made it without a flat.  I was really hoping our friend following us would have gotten a picture of the road, but he didn't; when I asked him, he laughed and said there's no way he could have diverted any attention from the road.  OTOH, the road from hell didn't keep the young ladies in the other car from sitting on top of the sunroof, butts on the rear and feet on the front. 

[vtk]

I'm noticing two distinctly different viewpoints on this thread.

One involves the road itself; the other involves the neighborhood the road passes through.

The latter is what the OP was getting at; some people don't read much beyond the thread title before posting, resulting in the former (with help now from inertia).

[Takumi]

US 1/301 in south Richmond. I used to feel the same way about US 1/460 Business in western Petersburg, but now I've driven it enough to become desensitized to it. I'm still not going down Halifax Street, though.

[Dr Frankenstein]

Having grown up in a small town (pop < 1,000) about 40 minutes from Montreal, which is a fairly mild city, and learning the rest from (or rather, being disinformed by) the news, movies and stories from "a friend of a friend", my tolerance of bad neighbourhoods is not that high (but I've seen worse; a friend of mine was nervous walking in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, which is rather lovely).

I don't think I've seen "real" bad hoods yet. There have been areas in which I rolled my windows up and locked my doors: areas around Pearl and Clinton Streets in Albany, downtown Yonkers and, of course, the Bronx. I don't know what the fuss is about Scarborough in Toronto, even with it being the part of the city I've covered the most. It looks nicer than Montréal-Nord or Saint-Michel.

I've heard slightly scary things about Newark, Camden and, obviously, Detroit. I'm planning on visiting the latter within the next twelve months. So far I've avoided most areas of the Bronx and I'm not sure if I want to finish US 1 and NY 22 through it alone. I'm almost done with US 9 through it but it goes through a "nice" area (despite having driven across a group of colour bums about to fight just as I entered the Bronx). One thing that's on my mind when driving through a shady neighbourhood in the U.S. is that my tag is not only out of state; it's literally foreign.

My parents were using the AAA Triptik service (back then, they gave you a "flip book" with maps that they highlighted for you).

They still do.

What does scare me now is seeing a sign containing an animal with antlers. I used to like zooming along remote roads at night when there's no traffic to get in the way but after hitting a deer I now prefer to drive during the day.

Avoid Canada at night.

[agentsteel53]

eh, there's no neighborhood in the US that is so bad that I wouldn't drive through it alone.  we're not talking about the slums of Johannesburg or Caracas here!

[abc2VE]

US 1/301 in south Richmond. I used to feel the same way about US 1/460 Business in western Petersburg, but now I've driven it enough to become desensitized to it. I'm still not going down Halifax Street, though.

I've lived here about 9 years and know a lot of the crime in South Richmond centers around the US 1/301 corridor, but I've never quite understood what the stigma is about Halifax rd. in petersburg. I know it a poor section, but it is crime riddled, I never really hear about crime there on the local news.

[roadman65]

How about Business US 41 in Tampa north of Downtown and south of US 92 where Florida Avenue is one way NB?  I did not feel comfortable there and was driving real fast and ready to run lights if I had to.

South Orange Avenue in Newark, NJ feels scary as I was the only whiite driver on the street.  What got me scared was that in South Orange to the west, its an upscale  community and has Seton Hall University.  At one point all the people you see driving with you disappear and all of a sudden you have African Americans.  No one bothered me, I have to say, but you figure people from the suburbs of Newark must go Downtown sometime and South Orange Avenue is the most direct route to the city from Livingston and South Orange.  So, there must be something that would cause people from the burbs to avoid that section of South Orange Avenue from Downtown to the City limit.

[kphoger]

While it is true that people in a given area know what areas to avoid, it's also been my experience that they often overreact.  They'll completely avoid certain neighborhoods that outsiders have no problem travelling to.  A good example of this is Calumet City, Illinois.  People avoid it, saying it's dangerous (likely due to the racial makeup), but, staistically, crime isn't all that high there.

[broadhurst04]

Any twisty, curvy mountain secondary road at night, because they are usually poorly marked (no reflectors, faded or patched over striping) and there are no guardrails.