Bridges are built to help people navigate their paths more safely over dangerous landscapes,however, this particular bridge seems to be there for another reason.
The Kuandinsky Bridge
It is no news that there are indeed several dangerous-looking vehicle bridges around the world, but few as adrenaline-inducing as Kuandinsky Bridge, in Russia’s Trans-Baikal Region.
The Kuandinsky Bridge, which stretches 570 meters over the Vitim River is precarious vehicle crossing just over two meters wide and features no railing or other safety features to keep the cars from falling into the frozen water if anything should go wrong.
Its decaying metallic structure is simply covered with old wooden railway sleepers that become very slippery when covered with ice and snow, which is almost all year round, since this is Siberia we’re talking about.
Oddity Central reports that the Kuandinsky (a.k.a Kalarsky) Bridge, which was originally designed as a railway bridge, as part of the Baikal–Amur Mainline, a 4,324-km-long railway traversing Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far-East, was never inaugurated, so the people of Kuanda, a nearby village of around 1,500 inhabitants, started using it to cross the Vitim River.
Because it’s not officially a functioning vehicle bridge, almost no repairs have been done to it in three decades since it was built. Time and brutal weather conditions have taken a heavy toll on the wooden sleepers, and they often break under the weight of large cars, leaving holes that drivers themselves have to plug or cover with planks in order to cross.
Crossing Kuandinsky Bridge in late Spring and Summer is a big challenge, especially for large trucks, but it’s during the winter that it becomes truly scary. As if the reduced width, lack of railings and slippery wooden surface weren’t enough to put drivers on edge, the strong side winds really get their blood pumping. Even the most experienced drivers cross the bridge with all their windows down to prevent the wind from pushing the cars to a watery grave.
But despite the challenge it poses, Kuandinky Bridge is more popular today than it has ever been, attracting daredevils from all around the region. Making it from one side to the other is considered an achievement bragging about, and a lot of the drivers record the experience and post it online as proof. Although the remote Kuanda village is slowly dying, as locals continue to move away in search of better prospects, the bridge looks like it will live on as a tourist attraction.
Interestingly enough, according to Russian blogger Sergey Dolya, there is no online record of any accidents or fatalities linked to Kuandinsky Bridge, but he suspects that’s because of the limited number of drivers who dare cross it.