A suspension bridge stretching 150 meters over the Dadong River Gorge in Chongqing, China, has been dubbed the world’s scariest suspension bridge because of how unsafe it looks.
For the past couple of years, clips of heavy construction vehicles traversing a narrow, flimsy-looking bridge suspended about 300 meters above a wide river gorge have constantly been going viral on social media leaving people wondering about its safety. Although it spans 240 meters, this terrifying wonder of engineering has no towers or base for support, relying only on four steel cables to support vehicles up to 45 tonnes in weight. It’s only wide enough for one vehicle to traverse, and despite featuring safety nets on each side, one wrong move can spell disaster. It’s tricky enough to navigate in normal conditions, but imagine having to do so on a particularly windy day.
Luckily, the Dadong River Gorge suspension bridge in Chongqing’s Wulong District is a temporary project designed to facilitate the construction of an even more impressive piece of infrastructure, Shuangbao Bridge. When completed, it will be the world’s largest double-arch bridge, stretching over both the Dadonghe and Xiaohegou Rivers. But in order to build this grandiose structure, workers needed a way to reach the small mountain that would end up supporting its center arch abutments. And that’s when they came up with the idea of a temporary suspension bridge.
Stretching 240 meters across the west side of a massive gorge, the so-called “world’s scariest suspension bridge” is 12 meters wide, but only has a track wide enough for one vehicle to pass at a time. Technically, that is not a problem, as it is only used by trucks and construction machinery working on Shuangbao Bridge, but that doesn’t mean traversing it is easy.
Because the suspension bridge has no towers or inclined cables for additional support, it is not the most stable in the world, although the horizontal tension of its four massive steel cables has done a good enough job so far.
China is renowned for its impressive infrastructure, from suspended “river highways” to mind-boggling overpasses.
