Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Buckle up and hold your breath.

You've just detoured into a world of peril.

Danger awaits around every hairpin turn high in the Andes.

- There is no room for mistakes.

It is completely unforgiving.

- [Narrator] And on the deadliest

six mile ribbon of asphalt on earth,

[bomb blasts]

beware the fog and avalanches.

- There's really no second chances up here.

- [Narrator] But if it's thrills you after

punch that accelerator.

- Trust me, there's a ton of adrenaline

going through your body.

- [Narrator] It's too late for a U-turn.

Now you are traveling the world's most dangerous drives

on "Modern Marvels."

[upbeat music]

A grim reality exists every time you get behind the wheel.

Any road can suddenly become deadly.

The next drive you take could be your last,

whether it's road design, the elements or other drivers.

All it takes is one false move.

One of the most dangerous roads of all

of according to many experts lies in Bolivia.

Part of a highway system

linking Bolivia's capital La Paz and Coroico.

It snakes 35 miles through the towering Andes Mountains.

Its official name is the North Yungas Road,

but those who dare to drive it

as well as those too fearful to try

call it El Camino de la Muerte, the Death Road.

[tense music]

Along this narrow strip of dirt

perched over vertical drops of nearly 2000 feet,

[men shouting]

between 200 and 300 motorists perish each year.

[tense music]

Wolfgang Ziegler

has driven the Death Road many times.

- The road is as unforgiving of any road

that I've ever driven on in the world.

The road itself is probably the width of an SUV

and you've got vehicles trying to pass each other.

And the vast majority of the accidents are collisions

where one of the vehicles or both of the vehicles

literally fall off of the sheer cliff that make up the road.

- [Narrator] Since it opened in the 1930s,

the Death Road has claimed thousands of lives

and many fatalities beyond that have gone unreported.

Many of the roads victims have plunged to their deaths

during the winter months when rushing water, falling rocks

and fog make driving conditions even more treacherous.

- In the rainy season, which is November through March,

the road basically turns to slime.

There's a lot of vehicles that slip off

the side of the road in the rain.

- [Narrator] The best bet to survive

this treacherous death trap

is choosing the right vehicle to navigate it.

- You need a four-wheel drive vehicle

and something that has excellent traction.

Be ready for quick maneuvers without over controlling.

Over controlling with no room for error

is gonna get you killed.

There is no room for mistakes.

It's completely unforgiving of any carelessness or neglect.

- [Narrator] In 2006, the Bolivian government

completed this modern safer road to be an alternative,

but hundreds still die every year along the old route

as some truckers still drive here,

including those that deliver goods

to towns that have grown up along the road.

- A lot of these truck drivers

have made their living on this road

and they get paid by how many times

they make this 35 mile trip back and forth.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] And they now share the peril

with thrill-seeking tourists that flock here

for the adrenaline rush of the ultimate driving test.

- It's a world landmark when you travel to Bolivia.

It's like the climbing of Everest when you go to Nepal.

It's bragging rights of having driven

on the world's most dangerous road.

- [Narrator] Thrill-seeking mountain bikers

from around the world, covet those bragging rights too.

More than 25,000 have taken the dare.

However, even cycling is not without risk.

Nine people were killed when an SUV hit a cyclist

and both plummeted 300 feet.

There were are no survivors.

But a road doesn't need blind curves

or hairpin turns to be deadly.

Another of the world's most dangerous roads

lies 8,000 miles from Bolivia

in the war torn nation of Iraq.

It's the stretch of road from central Baghdad

that leads seven miles to the country's main airport.

[tense music]

It's a chilling reminder that danger

can also lurk on a flat paved road

with no sharp turns or precipitous cliffs.

During the Iraq war, a trip on this short span of roadway

seemed like the longest drive of your life.

As a critical traffic artery in and out of Baghdad

for both soldiers and civilians,

it was a prime target for insurgents.

[bomb blasts]

Their weapons of choice, IEDs.

[bomb blasts]

- An IED is an improvised explosive device.

That's where the threat takes almost anything

that they have available such as leftover

artillery munitions, leftover mortar bombs,

or even just packages of explosives.

They'll place 'em at this side of the road,

have some kind of initiation device

and they'll launch that at a target when they see fit.

[bomb blasts]

- [Narrator] IED attacks on the road to Baghdad Airport

happen so often that the road was nicknamed IED alley.

[upbeat music]

To help make driving down this dangerous road safer,

the US Army turned to its experts in Warren, Michigan

at the Tank Automotive Research Development

and Engineering Center or TARDEC.

They spent several years developing armor

for Humvees and other vehicles traversing the road.

This essential technology was developed

to protect troops during the Iraq war.

- The first phase was add-on armor.

We had to provide armor protection, not only just the,

the metal and ballistic metals on there,

but we couldn't completely close the vehicle up,

'cause folks need to operate.

So we had to also develop and integrate

ballistic glass as well to protect our war fighters

against IEDs, small arms fire and those things

that they had experienced on the battlefield.

- Initially, we could just put a piece of steel up here,

but as we needed to go to lighter weight,

we'd go to an S-2 glass, fiberglass combined with Kevlar.

And we actually use for even higher performance

and lighter weight, ceramics.

- [Narrator] For reasons of security,

TARDEC engineers won't go into more detail

about the composition of its innovative armors

or the types of projectiles it uses to test them.

[dramatic music]

[gun bangs]

- We have a number of different types of rounds,

both bullets and fragments that we shoot

[gun bangs]

to see how well an armor design performs

against those particular projectors.

We're looking to balance three things.

It's called the three Ps,

payload, protection and performance.

So as we add protection to a vehicle system

that added weight reduces the payload,

the carrying capacity of that vehicle system.

It also negatively impacts

the automotive performance of the vehicle.

So what we do here at TARDEC is the engineering

and analysis to determine how do you trade off

those three things.

dramatic music

For years, one of the most dangerous roads in the world

was Baghdad's airport road.

Referred to as death road by locals.

Known as IED alley to US military.

A key part of the strategy to protect soldiers

was to neutralize the threat

of the explosive devices themselves.

The first step, deploy troops in a convoy of vehicles

to run a route clearance operation.

Their mission, find roadside IEDs before they explode.

[dramatic music]

[bomb blasts]

On this day, soldiers were training for hazardous duty

at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

- This platform that I'm sitting on here

is what we call the RG-31.

We use this platform as front and rear security

to our route clearance formations.

There are some technologies that we developed

to enhance this particular platform formation.

One of those technologies is the mine roller,

and that sits out in front of the vehicle

and anything that is subsurface or buried,

an IED perhaps or a mine.

If it's going to explode,

we want explode it with that roller.

- [Narrator] The RG-31, also sports a powerful camera,

allowing soldiers to identify potential threats

from a distance.

How far, they won't say.

And the route clearance convoy is bolstered

by this battle ready bad boy.

- Behind me what you're looking at right now

is what we call the Buffalo.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] Taller than a tank

and fitted with large armored glass windows.

The Buffalo offers soldiers inside

a wide and strategic range of view.

It also features a robotic arm with a pitchfork like hand

capable of extending to remove suspicious objects

from a road surface

or for digging up IEDs buried beneath a road.

- There are several types of IEDs.

Some are radio controlled, some are command wired.

They have to be aware of all of that,

so that as they come up on something,

they can identify it pretty quickly and easily.

Get it out of there before somebody's injured by it.

- [Narrator] This team in Iraq discovered an IED

just buried off the roadside.

- [Narrator] The team successfully unearthed it.

- [Soldier] We got her out.

- There you go. - We got her out.

- [Soldier] Awesome.

- [Narrator] Soldiers manning the Buffalo

can also deploy a remote controlled robot.

- I can't see inside a culvert.

So I'll unload this one, I'll run it down into the ditch.

Look into a culvert.

If I have a suspected item, then I can deal with it.

If there's nothing there, great.

I put the robot back on the chassis

and we continue our mission.

- [Narrator] However, clearing every IED from the road

to Baghdad Airport and other roads in Iraq is impossible.

And when they would go off,

the dangers went far beyond the explosions.

IEDs can create a gauntlet of sizable craters

that is difficult and dangerous to navigate.

The Army's answer was a concrete mobile mixer.

The next best thing to a concrete plant on wheels,

soldiers from the Army's 230th concrete team move fast

to complete the daunting task called rapid crater repair.

- Typical civilian Ready Mix truck

has to report to a batch plant to receive its load,

to go out and perform its mission.

One of the advantages of the concrete mobile mixer

over a typical Ready Mix truck is that the aggregate

and the pour on cement remain on the vehicle drive.

- [Narrator] Equipped with water tanks,

the mobile mixer can easily whip up a batch of concrete

at the mission site in a matter of minutes.

Then crater repair begins.

It's a race against the clock under threat of ambushes,

and enemy sniper fire.

Soldiers finish the job by signing the new section

of the roadway with their nickname, The Goons.

Then it's off to the next crater.

Even if you aren't driving a war zone,

danger of another kind may await

because when mother nature has her way,

[car screeching]

all bets are off.

One variable can turn even the most innocuous

stretch of road into a death trap.

[dramatic music]

[lightening]

The weather.

On average, more than 6 million vehicle crashes occur

in the United States each year,

and 1/4 are attributed to weather.

[tense music]

Statistically, the deadliest

kind of weather to drive in is fog

and driving in it, could feel like

the most dangerous drive of all.

One with zero visibility.

In this satellite photo,

that's snow draping over 400 miles

of California Central Valley.

It's an especially thick ground fog called Tule fog.

You can imagine the havoc it sometimes triggers

on two of the state's straightest busiest routes

that pass through the region,

Interstate 5 and Highway 99.

- If you were to drive into a thick bank of Tule fog,

you wouldn't be able to see that fence.

[traffic noise]

You probably wouldn't be able to see 10 or 12 feet

and it's 65 or 70 miles an hour.

If there's somebody stopped in that fog

in the lane that you're in, if you're not slowing down,

that's the recipe for disaster.

- [Narrator] California's Tule fog

has triggered several massive and deadly freeway pile ups

including one of the biggest on November 3rd, 2007.

On Northbound 99, the disastrous sequence of events

was set into motion at approximately 8:00 am.

- The first car that drove into the fog bank

drove into it at regular freeway speeds,

probably 70 miles an hour.

Didn't realize that it was gonna be as dense

or as thick as it was.

He didn't slow down until he was in it.

- [Narrator] After entering the dense fog,

the car virtually disappeared from the site of the driver

of an 18 wheeler following close behind.

He never saw the car slow down.

The initial collision set off a chain reaction of accidents

as vehicle after vehicle entered the fog bank and crashed.

[upbeat music]

- There was debris and vehicles scattered from this point,

going back this way, approximately one mile.

There were three different clusters involved in it,

102 to 103 vehicles with 18 big rigs involved.

It actually kind of reminded me of some of the footage

from Desert Storm, the highway to Baghdad,

where they had just bombed out all the vehicles.

- [Narrator] The driver of the first car

into the fog survived,

but two other motorists died and 39 were injured.

An unfortunate phenomenon makes fog-related traffic pile ups

of this magnitude possible.

Many drivers don't instinctively slow down

even when the fog limits their visibility to near zero.

Seeing no fixed points of reference along the roadside

can make them less aware of their speed.

- There's a theory that people are actually speeding up

when they can't see their surroundings

and they can't see how fast they're going.

- [Narrator] California's Department of Transportation,

Caltrans is trying to reduce the danger.

[upbeat music] [phone rings]

- Good morning, TLC, this is Renee.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] Weather stations

and electronic changeable message signs,

help motorists to avoid fog pile ups

by alerting them of conditions and advising caution.

- But an automated system is only as good as the people

driving it wanna obey it.

We've gotta get the people to realize that

when they can't see, they gotta slow down.

[tense music]

Snow causes an average of 150,000 traffic accidents

and kills over 1300 motorists in the US each year.

Winding through 30 miles of the Colorado Rockies

is one of America's most treacherous snowy roads.

- We're standing next to US 550, which is a Colorado highway

that generally runs north and south

between Ouray and Silverton, Colorado.

- [Narrator] Partially because it was built

on the same route as a 19th century wagon trail

leading to Colorado silver mines.

This section of US 550

is also referred to as the Million Dollar Highway.

And every winter nature blankets it with a treasure of snow

400 inches in an average year.

- Average storm is an inch an hour,

but we can get up to six an hour

with a lot of wind, which causes poor visibility.

- [Narrator] Poor visibility and slick icy surfaces

can make a lethal combination.

It's worse on the Million Dollar Highway

because the road is narrow, lacks guardrails,

and has drops of up to 400 feet.

- There are some very steep drop offs here,

and we don't have a place

to anchor the guardrail adequately,

and it helps not to have the guardrail

to be able to clear the snow off the highway.

- [Narrator] The drivers making this dangerous drive

have to worry about more than just

snow falling from the sky.

The Million Dollar Highway is one of the most

avalanche prone roads in the United States.

In the 25 mile stretch between Ouray and Silverton

and then south towards Durango,

there's 70 known avalanche paths

making the highway the highest avalanche road

per mile in North America.

- By far the highest hazards on these passes

during the wintertime are the avalanche hazards.

[dramatic music]

We average hundreds of avalanches

along this road every year.

And unfortunately we've had people killed

just up the road from us here.

On occasion, there's so much snow up here

and so many avalanches that we've either set off

or that have come down naturally

that we have to close the road to all traffic.

- [Narrator] But whether the snow on the road

comes from avalanches or storms,

the Colorado department of transportation's

basic countermeasure to the danger is snow removal.

And not surprisingly,

this prodigious task carries its own dangers.

Over the last few decades,

five workers have lost their lives.

- So when these guys are out plowing

the snow off the highway, the dangers from the avalanche,

you just, you never know when they're gonna,

when the slides are gonna run.

- [Narrator] For these workers,

as well as the motorists who drive here in the winter,

the best defense against danger is caution.

- You need to be very careful and just driving slow

and watching the speed limits and be careful

around all the curves.

There's really no second chances up here.

- [Narrator] One American city has taken great strides,

improving our chances on roads made dangerous by weather,

Houston, Texas.

Here they are no stranger to extreme weather events.

In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison flooded most of the city.

In 2005, Hurricane Rita forced a mass evacuation

and in 2017, Hurricane Harvey caused more than 100 deaths.

But to help cut down on these catastrophes,

Houston operates a special monitoring

and communications facility called Houston TranStar

that helps safeguard its motorists.

It also acts as an emergency management center.

- We monitor over 600 cameras on the freeways.

We have the four main screens here

where we watch tours of the major freeways.

We have over 300 miles of fiber out there

where we're bringing back the information from sensors.

This is our typical weather sensor.

It could be configured in different ways.

For roadway flooding, it has a rain gauge

and a pressure transducer.

We have wind gauges, which measure the wind speed,

wind direction, and also peak wind gusts.

They also have humidity barometric pressure,

and that's mainly for hurricanes and tropical storms.

- [Narrator] Once the sensors collect the data

and analyze it, TranStar relays it to the public

via its official website,

email alerts to registered users

and dynamic message signs along highways.

Whether it's torrential downpours,

heavy snow or dense fog,

there is one universal recommendation

from the transportation pros

when it comes to driving in those conditions.

- If you don't need to go, don't go.

- The best bet is if you can avoid that trip, stay at home,

but if you have to get out and it, you need to be cautious,

slow your speeds down, have greater following distances

and just be aware of the conditions at all times.

- [Narrator] Even when the weather is fine,

a leisure drive can turn dangerous in an instant.

[dramatic music]

On average, dangerous roads in the US

take a hundred lives every day.

[upbeat music]

Making for some of the most dangerous drives

in the United States are without a doubt

two lane and multi-lane highways.

- [Officer] You get to come on over here, ma'am.

- [Narrator] And no one knows that better

than the officers that patrol them.

- You're up here and anybody hits the back of my patrol car.

There's a good chance you're gonna get caught

somewhere in between that car and your car.

I don't want that to happen to you.

Just like that, see, just like that.

- [Narrator] An average of 38,000 people

perish on America's 4 million miles of highways each year

comprising 90% of the nation's

total transportation deaths.

[car skidding]

Even so, highway fatality rates in the US

have dropped significantly over the past few decades.

In 2019, it was just 1.1 fatalities

per 100 million miles driven.

One of the lowest fatality rates in history.

This fatality rate is minuscule

compared to the rates of the early 20th century.

The arrow witnessed its peak in 1909

when there were 45 fatalities per 100 miles driven.

[car horn and crash]

An astronomical 40 times greater than today.

[dramatic music]

The reason, thousands of new inexperienced drivers in cars

lacking today's safety features,

navigating primitive roads.

But the early 20th century also witnessed

the advent of highway hardware,

such as median barriers, guardrails, signposts,

and lane markers that revolutionized road safety.

- Roadside hardware has been around

pretty much since the roadway system was developed,

but we've been able to make roadside hardware better

and better over the years by investing in research

and by investing in technology.

[Crash]

- [Narrator] The Federal Highway Administration

helps test and develop highway hardware.

Since the late 1980s, FHWA engineers have crushed cars,

battered barriers and smashed guardrails

at the Federal Outdoor Impact Laboratory

or FOIL in McLean, Virginia,

all in the name of road safety.

Their test results are then studied

by the National Crash Analysis Center.

[upbeat music]

They used to do all their crash testing this way,

but now they rely heavily on computerized simulations

using virtual models of cars and highway hardware.

They now use real world tests

to confirm their virtual models behave like the real McCoy.

- This track is one of the two major impact facilities

we have here at the Federal Outdoor Impact Laboratory.

Behind me, you see our accelerator

that allows us to do full scale crash testing

over a range of vehicles,

ranging some small cars to single unit trucks.

We can conduct the test at various impact speeds

and we can repeat that time and time again.

- [Narrator] To test how some highway hardware

withstands impacts, engineers use a massive slab of concrete

instead of an actual vehicle.

- Behind me, we have the pendulum test.

The 5,000 pound concrete block that's there now

is basically representing a pickup truck

which when released will hit the guardrail

at 25 miles an hour.

[siren]

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] This test is conducted to determine

how much damage guardrails can take

before they can no longer serve their purpose.

[siren]

[metal rattling]

That purpose is to absorb the energy

and reduce the speed of any vehicle that hits the guardrail

while also keeping it on the shoulder

instead of diverting it back into traffic lanes.

[tires screeching]

The main purpose of highway medians is to provide separation

between opposite directions of travel.

But some states like North Carolina and Washington

have had chronic problems with cars crossing medians

without barriers, and then slamming into oncoming traffic.

One solution widely implemented in the 1990s

was a crucial highway hardware addition,

the cable median barrier.

These cables mounted on posts

not only helped prevent vehicles from breaking through,

but also function like a guardrail,

preventing cars from bouncing back

into harm's way in traffic lanes.

Its impact has been monumental.

- In some cases, it has been 90% effective

in reducing the incidents of head on collisions.

- [Narrator] But the strategic placement of highway hardware

is just as vital to countering danger as it's design.

[dramatic music]

This test car dips beneath the lowest cable of the barrier

placed on the far side of a ditch.

By moving the barrier to the near side of a ditch,

the cable performs as it should,

Even with these safety improvements,

many United States highways are still becoming antiquated.

- Highways and roadways in some of our rural areas,

they haven't changed a lot over the last 50 years,

60 years, 70 years, they're still very windy.

They're still very narrow.

- [Narrator] And they're often plagued by trees,

telephone poles, and other fixtures

set dangerously close to the shoulders.

But the Federal Highway Administration

has engineered to evaluate the perils of these

and other dangerous roads with a highway simulator.

[soft upbeat music]

Drivers sit inside a full sized car

and view an eight foot high display

with a wrap around 270 degree perspective.

Digitally recorded images of actual roads

are visible through the windshield and all door windows.

And strategically placed monitors

act as side view and rear view mirrors,

creating a realistic driving experience.

- And it's interactive.

So when they turn, the scenario turns.

When they stop, the scenario stops.

If they speed up the scenario speeds up.

- [Narrator] The simulator's motion base

creates the sensation of accelerating,

turning and climbing in descending hills.

The goal is to determine how drivers respond to hazards

on dangerous roads, in a safe, controlled environment.

Studying their reactions and habits

allows engineers to assess a road's design flaws

and correct them.

But the simulator also allows engineers

to analyze roads yet to be constructed.

Once trouble spots are identified,

it's back to the drawing board.

Statistically, the most dangerous roads on earth

are in third world and developing nations.

[car horn and crash]

While China and the United States are near the top

of the most dangerous roads list,

today, no country suffers more traffic fatalities

than India.

India accounts from more than 85%

of all traffic deaths a year worldwide.

That means that 151,000 Indians die each year,

four times as many as in the United States.

- Roads in the developing world and third world countries

have a tendency to be more hazardous than our roads here

primarily because we have been at it for a while now

and have worked to make roads safe

for the vehicles that are on 'em.

In developing countries, third world countries

it's a new concept.

- The main issues are these roadways

have all different variety of traffic on the same road.

Like you have passenger vehicles, you have trucks,

you have pedestrians, you have rickshaws,

you have cycles which actually reduces the capacity

and adds the safety concern.

- [Narrator] Compounding the danger

is that hundreds of thousands of new drivers

take to these cluttered roads every year.

From a generation with virtually no car culture heritage.

- In the US and in Western Europe,

you've had generations that have operated vehicles.

So people have almost a cultural instinct

on what you do when you get behind a wheel of a car.

- [Narrator] Not so in China,

where millions of new drivers are turning the nation's

growing interstate system into a crapshoot.

- Today, the Chinese driving along their new super highways

are high speed neophytes.

They don't know what they're doing.

They're moving about they're changing lanes.

They're using their horns

when people can't possibly hear them, it is chaotic.

Traveling on the Chinese interstates today

is like being in the Wild West.

Anything goes.

- [Narrator] Beyond improving the education

and training of its drivers, developing nations

are enlisting the help of traffic specialists,

like those that Arcadis in Atlanta, Georgia.

They design safe, smoothly flowing roads

based on successful systems developed over decades

in the US and Europe.

- We regularly develop simulation models,

which also become lifelike in being able

to look at the roadway on a computer

as we currently have designed it,

we can create three dimensional models

that we could communicate with our client.

[upbeat music]

- [Narrator] These models allow engineers

to dissect the flaws of existing roads or highways

and determine how they can refigure them

to improve traffic flow.

[upbeat music]

A major focus of companies like Arcadis

is urban intersections.

Globally, most traffic accidents occur in intersections

and design flaws of intersections in

developing nations multiply the dangers.

Many have no traffic signals, marked traffic lanes,

sidewalks, or crosswalks, creating gridlock and chaos.

- There is already so many congestion

that everybody wants to get to their destination

as soon as possible.

So they kind of get frustrated and break the rules.

- [Narrator] Case in point,

this impatient bus driver in China.

The traffic signal is red

and there are several cars stopped in front of him.

So he turns intentionally into oncoming traffic lanes

and runs the light only luck prevents a collision.

Can traffic engineers discourage stunts like this

with effective intersection design?

- As engineers, we try to lay out the road

to properly convey to the traveling public

through signing and marking what is approaching them

at the intersection, a proper edge pavement delineation,

right turn arrows, left turn arrows

to delineate which lanes are through lanes,

which lanes are left turn lanes,

which lanes are right turn lanes.

And then those are sequenced with the,

the signal phases at the main intersection.

- [Narrator] Adding well coordinated signal systems

at problematic intersections like this one,

not only help mitigate the danger to drivers,

but also to pedestrians.

[upbeat music]

Deficient intersection design encourages jaywalking.

And half of all traffic fatalities in developing nations

involve pedestrians.

- In addition to the roadway designed for vehicular traffic,

we also try to put in elements of pedestrian access,

like the sidewalk that I'm standing on now

will provide proper pedestrian crosswalks

and signalize free flowing movements for pedestrians

will get their own signal phase as well.

So that can safely and efficiently move the,

the pedestrian safely through an intersection,

avoiding conflict.

Maybe the most unusual kind of dangerous drive

is created by drivers who go to great lengths

to be on it.

[upbeat music] [car engines revving]

A special breed of competitors like this bunch

outside of Cedar City, Utah is pushing the boundaries

of off-roading to new heights.

[upbeat music] [car engines revving]

They relish the challenge of maneuvering

highly modified trucks or buggies over terrain

that most casual off roaders would consider

impossible to navigate.

[upbeat music] [car engines revving]

Their sport, aptly enough is called rock crawling.

- It feels like a rollercoaster, every single course.

You know, a lot of new people come out and watch

and they think, man, this is insane

and I can't believe you guys do this.

- One thing that all these guys have in common

is just going on a typical trail ride

isn't quite enough for 'em.

They wanna be pushed to do something extreme,

not just go out and do the same thing everyone else is.

[engine revving]

And you start feeling comfortable

being at 70 degree angles

up or down and 50 degree angle sideways.

- The competition is different

because it's usually a rock pile someplace.

And we're just trying to drive up the most extreme thing

that the course designer can think of.

[car engine roaring]

- [Narrator] Nicole Johnson

has been driving rock crawlers competitively since 2001.

- I think it's really exciting actually,

to be behind the wheel of this car

when you're driving up a big rock,

sometimes all you see is sky and clouds,

or when you're coming off of something steep,

you just see ground and you just hope you can run it out

and not roll in.

- [Frank] Okay drive forward, three wheel.

- [Narrator] Nicole, like every driver in rock crawling

depends on a spotter to act as a second set of eyes

and direct the overall effort.

- Rough over there, we're backing down.

- [Narrator] Nicole's spotter is her husband, Frank.

- There's just little cues that you look for

in the suspension and the way the car's built

that you could kind of tell that, oh, okay, we got it

or now we gotta back off.

- Steer me. - Okay, stop.

- The driver might get all of the glory,

but it's the spotter that does all the work.

The spotter's the poor guy

that's gotta run around the vehicle and pulling on ropes

and stacking rocks and pointing us where we need to go.

- [Narrator] The spotters face the greatest dangers

in rock crawling.

[car engine revving]

- No this way, straighten your wheel.

- [Narrator] Especially in the all too likely event

of a rollover.

- Spotters, falling down cliffs and hurting their legs

or their knees or any part of their body, really.

If the spotter is in a baddest position,

they could get run over it.

[car engine revving]

- [Narrator] For Nicole and Frank,

the secret to minimizing the danger is trust

and good communication.

- [Frank] Drive forward.

- [Nicole] Doesn't feel right.

- [Frank] Drive forward.

There you go.

- You really have to trust.

Sometimes the car feels really weird.

Feels like you're gonna roll when you're really not.

And he can tell if it's going to.

- [Frank] Rear dig down, rear dig down.

- Down this way. - Yeah.

Your ass end has to be that way, Nicole.

- [Nicole] I'm trying, Frank.

- Our way of dealing with it,

maybe we yell at each other.

Work left, go left now, go left.

All the way left, work in left.

- [Nicole] That's right.

- Go right, whatever that is.

But it it's a all, you know,

water under the bridge at that point,

we're here to have fun.

And that's what about, we had a lot of fights today,

but you know, we're smiling [laughs] so.

- It's all good.

- It's good.

- [Narrator] Beyond good teamwork,

competitors counter the sport's inherent dangers

with technology.

- Your dangers are really high.

If you're not wearing your proper safety harnesses,

if you're not wearing your helmet or fire suits

or anything like that, the danger is always there.

It's any kind of Motorsport.

[car engine revving]

- Rock crawling is a very dangerous sport.

We do treat it with respect.

We make sure that we have the best of the best

as far as a suspension seat,

the strongest seat belts that we can get.

- [Narrator] And these modified monsters,

also sports specialized tires available only for competitors

tailor made for the task.

- These are not your normal street tires.

These are 37 inch Maxxis Trepadors.

And as you can see, just by the tread,

they're ultra sticky.

And this is what keeps us cling to those rocks

on those side hills, on those big climbs,

this is what gets us up there.

[car engine revving]

- [Narrator] But it's more than just enormous tires

that get these buggies around these rocks.

It also takes state-of-the-art suspension systems.

- The suspension is known as a 4-link, as you can see,

there are two lower trailing arms

and two upper trailing arms.

Those upper trailing arms are actually

what locate the axle underneath the vehicle.

And then the lowers simply provide support.

This particular suspension gives us great movement up

and down for wheel travel and really helps us cling to those

hard side hills and those nasty crawling sections.

- [Narrator] And specialized brake controls

allow independent operation of the front and rear brakes.

While most of us do the best we can to avoid danger

when we're behind the wheel, these thrill-seekers pursue it

and savor its taste.

[upbeat music]

- When you're hanging off these cliffs and you're, you know,

looking down, ready to roll a vehicle

or you're leaning sideways and having to, you know,

pull an awesome save.

Trust me, there's a ton of adrenaline

going through your body.

- I think you have to be a little bit

of an adrenaline junkie,

and I can't think of any other sport that I would rather do.

- [Narrator] For these extreme athletes,

the more clear and present danger may lurk,

where they rejoin the rest of us on the established roads.

No need to seek out danger here,

sooner or later...

[crash]

- [Officer] Just like that, see, just like that.