Danger, Fun, and the Love of the Road

Motorcycles exemplify a unique love of romance and danger in the American cultural zeitgeist. From the gritty outcasts of 1960s biker cinema to the modern resurgence of interest and sales, thanks to shows like FX’s Sons of Anarchy, motorcycles are now, more than ever, a symbol of American freedom and independence.

Owning a bike remains a dream for many, but anyone who has taken the plunge and become a motorcycle owner will tell you that it quickly becomes a lifestyle. Even at the weekend hobbyist level, riding a motorcycle makes you see the road differently as you begin to judge your surroundings by a completely new set of parameters.

Motorcycle accident injury lawyers can tell you that inattentive drivers of cars, trucks, and SUVs are leading causes of injury and fatality to riders. When you ride a motorcycle, you see and acknowledge other bikes on the road and become vigilantly aware of the blissful ignorance with which many car drivers merge lanes on the freeway without checking for riders in their blind spot. However, you also begin to judge the road itself differently, mentally tagging interesting or challenging rides for future revisits.

Part of what makes a route fun and worthwhile for a motorcycle ride is the potential for danger. The thrill, the excitement, and the visceral engagement between man and machine underscore all of the best and most enjoyable parts of riding. As such, any compilation warning of dangerous roads for motorcycles will be read by bikers themselves as a checklist of things to do and places to go, given the opportunity. Such is the beautiful, alluring paradox of the motorcycle mythos.

Beartooth Highway

The most appealing part of a ride through Montana and Wyoming, also known as Big Sky Country, is the utter lack of civilized human sprawl. You can drive for hours and hours without seeing a town of more than a handful of residents; wildlife abounds, and, aside from the road beneath your tires, the land yields little indication of human intervention. It still looks and feels wild, and the clear air and unpolluted beauty of the northern U.S. can be truly breathtaking from behind a set of handlebars.

Tracing the border between Wyoming and Montana, the Beartooth Highway is a sixty-seven mile stretch of U.S. Highway 212. It winds its way through the Beartooth and Absaroka Mountains at over ten thousand feet, and it is an access point to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone National Park, offering visitors some of the most breathtaking examples of Big Sky Country scenery; it’s often referenced as “the most beautiful drive in America.”

Part of what makes the Beartooth so appealing is its volatility. The pristine vistas and unprecedented wildness are forged by unpredictable weather, including extreme winds and snowstorms which can rear up out of nowhere even in the middle of the summer. Sudden avalanches and heavy snow often block all or part of the road, and riders must be constantly aware of the patchy ice which forms over many sections of the pass. Even in perfectly clear conditions, the nearly seventy-mile journey has an expected completion time of at least two hours.

Tail of the Dragon

Deals Gap in Blount County, Tennessee, comprises an eleven-mile stretch of U.S. Route 129, which doesn’t seem like much, compared to many other rides that make their way onto “best/most dangerous” lists like this one. What sets Tail of the Dragon apart from most roads is the fact that within its relatively short run lay more than three-hundred curves, many of them totally blind and with monikers like Beginner’s End, Gravity Cavity, Wheelie Hell, and Brake or Bust Bend. It’s one of the most scenic drives in the country, but also one of the most dangerous and challenging for the uninitiated.

While Tail of the Dragon is one of the most popular roads in the U.S. for motorcycle and sports car enthusiasts, thanks to its hairpin curves and the necessity of low-speed maneuvering, it is most certainly not for the faint of heart. Until recently, it was a favorite shortcut of truckers and commercial drivers, but the state of Tennessee has since restricted large vehicle access; with so many blind twists and turns, head-on collisions between commercial trucks and riders rounding corners became all too common.

Deals Gap is well-known among motorcycle accident law firms and those immersed in the world of biker lore. It’s so legendarily dangerous for bikers that there’s even a monument to fallen riders near its end: a huge and gnarled tree, adorned with twisted bits and pieces of wreckage from motorcycles unfortunate enough to have been “bitten by the dragon.”

Million Dollar Highway

Most modern freeways are built with flare-taped guard rails and rumble strips along the shoulder to keep drivers in line and give us a bit of a margin for error. You don’t necessarily notice them until you have a close call, but these little additions do a lot to make roads safer and promote peace of mind, especially along high-altitude routes with steep drop-offs. When they’re absent, it can be quite nerve-wracking, even for the most experienced rider.

Such is the case with the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado. A part of the world-famous San Juan Skyway, this twenty-five mile stretch of U.S. Route 550 was built in the 1880s and runs between the cities of Silverton and Ouray.

It peaks over eleven thousand feet during its traversal of three narrow mountain passages, and it flaunts narrow traffic lanes with no guard rails, no shoulders to speak of, and dizzyingly steep cliffs throughout. Owing to its pioneer roots, the road itself is cut directly from the sides of the mountains, offering absolutely spectacular views with zero margins for driver or rider error.

The Million Dollar Highway was hand carved and hewn from the land by Russian immigrant Otto Mears, a legendary road builder who played a crucial part in the early development of mining commerce in southwestern Colorado.

In addition to remaining one of the most historic and rugged still-drivable roads from the 1800s, the Million Dollar Highway also has one of the highest avalanche rates in North America; even in good weather, the pass is prone to forming slick patches of ice along its many switchbacks and S-curves. As any motorcycle wreck attorney will attest, it’s terrifyingly easy for even the most experienced riders to lay down a bike in such conditions.

Anywhere, USA

Part of what makes fun rides like the ones above so dangerous is the isolation of the routes themselves; same goes for rural flatland stretches through the south and the mid-west, where you might go for hours without seeing so much as a gas station. Unfortunately, this drastically increases the difficulty of getting emergency vehicles and personnel to the crash site in a timely manner.

A big part of staying alive as a regular rider has to do with actively minimizing risk and personal injury by reacting in a split second to inclement conditions; every experienced biker has that story of the time things could have gone horribly wrong, where quick thinking and “falling correctly” saved the day.

If you’re in a bike crash, your first phone call should always be to local police and emergency services, especially on isolated roads where wait times for any sort of help may well exceed ninety minutes. Your second call should be to a vehicle accident law firm, where professionals in the field can help make sure you’re treated fairly by your insurance company and reimbursed for any medical bills you may accumulate.

Ask a motorcycle injury lawyer who’s been in the business long enough, and they’ll tell you that any road can be dangerous with the right factors in play. While rider error and negligence of lifesaving regulations like helmet laws certainly contribute to motorcycle injury and fatality, often accidents are caused or exacerbated by factors beyond the motorcyclist’s control.

While there’s no such thing as too much fun, it’s a good idea to be in touch with your motorcycle wreck lawyer before you set off to traverse the country’s dangerous backroads, byways, and scenic passes.