Routes

By the numbers

The world's best driving roads, measured

We have mapped and measured 713 of the world’s greatest driving roads across 85 countries, 17,853 miles of tarmac in all. Every figure below comes from each road’s real GPS geometry, not a rounded-up legend, and every road is fact-checked by a human. Here is what the data says.

Roads713hand-picked
Countries85six continents
Mapped17,853 mi28,732 km
Hairpins4,017counted from the line

The records

Highest 5,338 m Khardung La India Steepest 33% Hardknott & Wrynose Passes United Kingdom Longest 424 mi Duku Highway China Most hairpins 109 Spiti Valley Road India Most corners 911 Thrumshing La Road Bhutan

Where the great roads are

The ten countries with the most roads in the catalogue.

CountryRoadsMilesAvg. summit
United Kingdom1301,726330 m
United States812,0351,720 m
France598851,635 m
Italy546971,776 m
Japan294061,334 m
Switzerland263652,042 m
Spain243491,340 m
Austria222691,904 m
Germany22351899 m
Norway18590718 m

The typical great road

The average road in the catalogue runs 25 miles with a high point of 1,299 m, and the 4,017 hairpins work out at roughly 6 a road. By difficulty the split is 59 easy, 343 moderate, 266 demanding, 45 expert. The headline records are the outliers: Khardung La climbs more than four times higher than the average, and Duku Highway is the better part of twenty average roads end to end.

How we measure

Every number here is computed from the road’s actual mapped line. Summit and climb come from the elevation profile, gradient and corner counts from the geometry, hairpins from the angle of each bend. Nothing is copied from a listicle or rounded up to a famous figure: where our measurement differs from the legend, we publish the measurement, then a human checks the road before it makes the catalogue. Free to cite, with a link to bestdrivingroads.com.