Brit road nicknamed Snake Pass named as one of world’s most dangerous

A ROAD between Manchester and Sheffield has been named one of the world’s most dangerous.

The A57, known as the Snake Pass, is in the top ten along with a perilous Bolivian stretch dubbed the Route of Death.

The 26-mile winding stretch of road 1,680ft above sea level opened in 1821 and is notorious for its bends and blind summits.

It closes for 70 days a year due to bad weather on average and there were 137 crashes between 2014 and 2018.

Skippers Canyon Road in New Zealand, a 16.5-mile route carved out by miners in 1890, was number one thanks to twisting hairpin turns and high elevation.

El Caracol, which links Argentina and Chile in the Andes mountains, came in second while North Yungas Road in Bolivia was third.

Snake Pass in the Pennines was seventh ahead of Bealach-na-ba in the Scottish Highlands, known as the Devil’s Elbow, and South Africa’s Sani Pass, only passable in a 4x4, in the list.

Sun man Stewart Whittingham said after tackling Snake Pass: “My hands felt clammy and my stomach lurched as I steered round another hairpin.

"Any wrong move and I would be literally driving off a cliff.”