Terrifying driving countries and experiences

Italy isn't too bad, until you get into the centre of a large city. Florence is a nightmare; I'd choose London on a busy weekday over Florence.

However my scariest moment was driving up an alpine pass - somewhere around the Italian/Swiss border - whereby the road was just wide enough for one car. To the right was an unprotected drop of so many hundreds of metres, and to the left was cliff face. You hoped that if you were to meet someone coming the other way, it happened either on a bend (where there was more space), or whilst you were driving with the cliff face to your right!

Most other alpine passes had varying degrees of barriers/stones/fencing to protect(?) drivers. However I wouldn't do whatever pass that was again ...

Saudi Arabia, Riyadh... What an eye opener!! 3 lane traffic lights, there will be 5-6 columns of cars wedged waiting for the lights. Near misses everywhere. Unbelievable standards of driving. The place where I was working had all the glass blown out of it due to a petrol tanker explosion which also took out the bridge it was on and killed a fair amount of people, a few weeks before my arrival.

I was driven by the company I was working for but it was baaaaad.

Italian motorways are pretty interesting, with drivers trying to force their way through two lanes of traffic down the middle, this was quite common as I drove down to Tuscany. But nothing on Saudi. Apart from that I thought Italy was pretty good.

On the same trip as Tuscany, after being spoilt with French and German motorways, it was pretty depressing getting off the Ferry and driving in Britain again. Over crowded, getting cut up, traffic jams etc.

I always find Italy to be a relaxing drive However we do live in Poland where the drivers are abysmal. Italians seem to be a little bit careless but the average Polish driver has no idea that he in actually in a motor vehicle let alone driving one. If they somehow do realise they are driving a car they believe that somehow this makes them totally invincible and they spend the rest of their driving career driving like a 17 year old boy who has just passed his test.

Overtaking into oncoming traffic. mounting kerbs because the traffic is too heavy. Changing lanes by yanking the steering wheel from one side to the other with no indication. In built up areas they have to drive flat out everywhere. On motorways they have to crawl along at 100 KPH blocking the outside lane. Stopping on the slip-road before joining the main carriageway is common practice as opposed to matching the speed of the vehicles already on there.

On normal roads when in a queue of cars behind a truck tailgating is rife. Getting as close to the vehicle in front is a way of proving that you are a real man. The fact that your 20 year old Passat TDI that has been rebuilt several times from previous crashes can't muster up the power required to pass the queue of traffic and the truck means you are just forced to tailgate and hopefully you will convince the traffic to move faster. The scary thing is that if they crash and survive they believe that they are even more invincible. (most normal people in the UK would take this as a warning)

You should always remember that they never do anything wrong at all and its always someone else's fault and they are all simply the best drivers in the world. Avoid driving in Poland

Here is this weeks dashcam compilation (haven't watched it yet but it highlights the idiocy of the typical driver)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEnWcaI3JHo

The only country i've driven in where the drivers are worse is Bulgaria. Serbia was relaxing, Macedonia is fine, Greeks are similar to italians. (they don't really care about driving enough)

wonder if the tales match up to the countries shown here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by...

Egypt wins it for me. Thankfully my client assigned me a driver. I remember a trip from Nasr to Cairo, seeing an ambulance with his blue lights on, reversing against traffic on the motorway because he'd missed his exit. It made me glad it wasn't me in the back, as someone ploughing into the back of that old van at 80mph + would have been horrific.

I've been to places in Asia that didn't feel as dangerous as they were so busy that the traffic speed was comparatively low. On the highways of Egypt they've got space to get some real speed up. The state of the roads and the knackered cars is ridiculous. Nothing in Europe comes even remotely close.

I thouroghly enjoyed driving around Rome, once I adopted to their driving 'style'. Helped that we were in a £300 car, that we also scraped in Rome.

Scariest place I've personally driven in... Dominican Republic. Potholes that could swallow a Land Rover so people regularly drove on the wrong side of the road, no adherence to traffic signs or lights. As far as I could figure out, everyone had right of way.

I'm sure there are worse places... but not by much.

Shenzhen, China - saw my first dead body next to an overturned taxi within 15 minutes of arriving, and then saw accidents on every single journey afterwards.
The driving is st, the traffic is st and the city's a st-hole. Going back there next week.

It's reasonably well known I think. It's why you'll see a lot of posters metaphorically roll their eyes a bit on PH when people moan about driving standards in the UK. We might be crap but we're not as crap as almost everywhere else and are really good at not dying.

I live in Mexico: driving standards vary a fair bit according to state, but the city I live in has more accidents than any other area of Mexico.

I can't remember the last time I went for a drive of any length and didn't see an accident. There's a fairly deadly combination of people driving ancient Tsurus / Beetles at 20MPH on highways with no lights, and others in Cayennes / Navigators flying along at 100MPH+ - I've seen cars utterly flattened, with one glance telling you there'd be no survivors. There's also no MOT here, and most cars are in such poor condition that they'd never pass a UK one without serious work. Many are also cut and shuts.

Add to that the lorries, most over 20-30 years old which have bald tyres and no speed limiter fitted, plus the various pedestrians / cyclists that wander around unlit motorways, then the fact that everyone I know will drive home even after a properly heavy session, and it's basically a recipe for disaster.

Strangely though, I love it, and far prefer driving here to driving in the UK. It's great being able to drive however you want to without worrying about a speed camera flashing you, or some sad bd with a dash cam handing footage of your "infraction" to the police.