Tail of the Dragon
Tail of the Dragon is the name of a 18 km long mountain road through the Appalachian Mountains , which forms the border between the US states of North Carolina and Tennessee . It is a section of Highway 129 and, with its 318 curves, is one of the most dangerous roads in the world.
history
The road follows an earlier Cherokee trail and was paved in the 1930s. In the first decades after it was built, this street was almost exclusively used by locals. But in the 1990s there was a real boom of extreme car and motorcycle drivers looking for the thrill. However, many underestimate the danger, especially since a speed of just 40 or 50 km / h is enough to lose control of your vehicle on one of the numerous sharp bends. As a result, a large number of fatalities and serious injuries have already occurred on this street. In October 2011, for example, the author Joel Davis found that there had been 17 deaths on the road among motorcyclists alone in the previous six years.
Web links
- Official web representation (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ WWF youth : Tail of the dragon - Höllenstraßen (article from June 8, 2014)
- ↑ Hell Roads: The World's Most Dangerous Roads ( 2013 N24 documentary on YouTube )
- ↑ The Daily Times: 2011 Taming the Dragon: 'Dragon's' toll: 17 in six years (English; article from October 16, 2011)
Coordinates: 35 ° 30 ′ 9.8 ″ N , 83 ° 56 ′ 56.5 ″ W.