NARRATOR: Buckle up
and hold your breath. You've just detoured
into a world of peril. Danger waits 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,
beware the fog and avalanches. There's really no
second chances up here. NARRATOR: But if it's
thrills you're 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're on dangerous
road on "Modern Marvels." [music continuing] 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. The most dangerous road
of all, according to many, 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. Along this narrow strip of dirt,
perched over vertical drops of nearly 2,000 feet,
between 200 and 300 motorists perish each year. Wolfgang Ziegler has driven
the Death Road many times since 1987. The road is as
unforgiving of any road that I've ever driven
on in the world. There's no guardrails
at all on this road. The road itself is probably
the width of an SUV. 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 road's victims
have plunged to their deaths during the winter months, when
rushing water, falling rocks, and fog make this dangerous
road 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 to be ready
for quick maneuvers without overcontrolling. Overcontrolling with
no room for error is going to get you killed. There is no room for mistakes. It is 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. 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 70,000
have taken the dare. In 2008, an SUV struck
and killed a cyclist, then plunged off the road
and plummeted 300 feet, killing eight people
in the vehicle. But a road doesn't
need blind curves or unprotected 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, the stretch of road
from central Baghdad that leads six miles to
the country's main airport. It's a chilling reminder
that danger can also lurk on a flat, paved
road with no sharp turns or precipitous cliffs. A trip on this short
span of roadway can seem like the longest
drive of your life. As a critical traffic artery
in and out of the country for both soldiers
and civilians, it's a prime target for insurgents. Their weapons of choice
are so-called IEDs. An IED is an Improvised
Explosive Device. That's where the threat takes
almost anything that they had available, such as leftover
artillery munitions, leftover mortar bombs, or even just
packages of explosives. They'll place some on
the side of the road, have some kind of
initiation device, and they'll launch that at
a target when they see fit. NARRATOR: IED attacks on
the road to Baghdad Airport became so regular that the
road was nicknamed IED Alley. To help make this
dangerous road safer, the US Army has
turned to its experts in Warren, Michigan at the Tank
Automotive Research Development and Engineering
Center, or TARDEC. Here, over the
past several years, they've been
developing new armor for Humvees and other
vehicles traversing the road. The first phase
was add-on armor. We had to provide armor
protection, not only just the metal and ballistic
metals on there, but we completely
close the vehicle up because 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 we needed to go to lighter
weight, better performing. We can use something
like aluminum. But as we needed to
go to lighter weight, we'd go to an S2
glass, fiberglass, combined with a kevlar. And we actually use, for even
higher performance and lighter weight, ceramics. You can think of
these ceramics as some that probably most of
you have in your kitchen. A little bit better
performing, but very similar. 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. [gunshot] We have a number of different
types of rounds, both bullets and fragments, that we shoot-- [gunshot] --to see how well an
armor design performs against those
particular projectiles. We're looking to
balance three things. It's called the three P's-- 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. NARRATOR: But developing new
armor for the Army's vehicles is just part of making this
dangerous road in Iraq safer. Another key strategy is
to neutralize the threat on the road itself. The first step, deploy troops
in a convoy of vehicles to run a route clearance operation. Their mission, find roadside
IEDs before they explode. Soldiers train for
this hazardous duty at Fort Leonard
Wood in Missouri. This platform that
I'm sitting on here is what we call the RG31. We use this platform as
front and rear security to our rock
clearance formations. There are some
technologies that we've 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 to explode
it with that roller. NARRATOR: The RG31 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. 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 the 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 is injured by it. NARRATOR: This team in Iraq
discovered an IED buried just off the roadside. The team successfully
unearthed it. SOLDIER: We got around. SOLDIER: There you go. SOLDIER: We got around. SOLDIER: Awesome. NARRATOR: Soldiers manning
the Buffalo can also deploy a remote-controlled robot. I can't see inside a Cobra,
so I'll unload this one. I'll run it down into the
ditch, look into a Cobra. 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: But clearing every
IED from the road to Baghdad Airport and other roads in
Iraq is nearly impossible. And when they go
off, the dangers go far beyond the explosions. IEDs can create a gauntlet
of sizable craters that is difficult and
dangerous to navigate. The Army's answer is a concrete
mobile mixer, the next best thing to a concrete
plant on wheels. Typical civilian
riding mixed 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 Portland 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 it's up to the soldiers of
the Army's 230th concrete team to accomplish the daunting task
called rapid crater repair. It's a race against the clock
under threat of ambushes and enemy sniper fire. They 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 in a war zone, the danger of another
kind may await, because when mother nature
has her way, all bets are off. he most innocuous stretch of road into a death trap-- the weather. On average, more than
6,400,000 vehicle crashes occur in the United
States each year, and one quarter are
attributed to weather. Statistically, the deadliest
kind of weather to drive in is fog. It can create the most
dangerous road of all, one with zero visibility. In this satellite
photo, that's not snow draping over 400 miles of
California's 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. 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 pileups, 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. 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 going
to be as dangerous 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 sight of the driver of an 18-wheeler
truck, 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. There was debris and vehicles
scattered from this point going back this way
approximately one mile. There was three different
clusters involved in it, 102 to 103 vehicles with
18 big rigs involved. [sirens] 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 pileups 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
were 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. Good morning. TMC. This is Rene. NARRATOR: Weather stations and
electronic changeable message signs help motorists
avoid fog pileups by alerting them of conditions
and advising caution. RICK MCCOMB: But
an automated system is only as good as the people
driving it want to obey it. We've got to get the people to
realize that when they can't see, they've got to slow down. NARRATOR: If you haven't had
a dangerous encounter with fog on the road, chances
are you've had to cope with this frozen threat. Snow causes 400,000
traffic accidents and kills 1,500 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's silver mines, this
section of US 550 is often referred to as
the Million Dollar Highway. And every winter,
nature blankets it with a treasure of snow, 400
inches in an average year. KATHY DANIELS: Average
storm's 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. RICHARD REYNOLDS: There's
some very steep dropoffs 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: But drivers
on this dangerous road 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. RICHARD REYNOLDS: By
far, the highest hazards on these passes
during the winter time are the avalanche hazards. In the 30 miles or so between
Ouray, south of Silverton, and then south towards
Durango, there's 110 known avalanche paths. We average hundreds of
avalanches along this road every year, and
unfortunately, we've had seven 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,
three maintenance workers have lost their lives. These guys are
out plowing snow off the highway, the
dangers from the avalanche, you just never know when
the slides are going to 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 forward in improving our chances
on roads made dangerous by weather-- Houston, Texas. Here, they're no stranger
to extreme weather events. In 2001, tropical storm Allison
flooded most of the city. And in 2005, hurricane Rita
forced a mass evacuation. But 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 monitored over 600
cameras on the freeways. We had the four
main screens here, where we watched 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 can 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 in it, you need to be cautious,
slow your speeds down, have a greater
following distances, and just be aware of the
conditions at all times. NARRATOR: Even when
the weather is fine, dangerous roads in
the US take an average of 100 lives every day. And if you think the
roads are dangerous today, you'll never believe the
fatality rate drivers faced a century ago. The most dangerous roads
in the United States are, without a doubt, two-lane
and multi-lane highways. Just come on over here, ma'am. NARRATOR: And no one knows that
better than the officers that patrol them. If you're up here and anybody
hits the back of my patrol car, it's a good chance you're
going to get caught somewhere between that car and your car. I don't want that
to happen to you. Just like that, see? Just like that. NARRATOR: On average,
over 40,000 people perish on America's four
million miles of highways each year, comprising 94% of the
nation's total transportation deaths. Even so, highway
fatality rates in the US have dropped significantly
over the past few decades. The fatality rate in 2006
was about 1.4 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles
of travel, which was the lowest fatality rate in history. NARRATOR: This fatality rate is
minuscule compared to the rates in the early 20th century. The era witnessed its
peak rate in 1909, when there were 45 fatalities
per 100 million miles driven, an astronomical 32 times
greater than today. The reason? Thousands of new, inexperienced
drivers in cars lacking today's safety features, navigating
primitive roads just as deficient. But the early 20th century also
witnessed the advent of highway hardware, such as median
barriers, guardrails, sign posts, 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. NARRATOR: Today, 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. 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. KEN OPIELA: 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 from small cars to single unit trucks. We can conduct the tests
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. NARRATOR: This test is conducted
to determine how much damage guardrails can take before
they can no longer serve their purpose. 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. 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 incidence of
head-on collisions. NARRATOR: But the strategic
placement of highway hardware is just as vital to countering
danger as its design. 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 the 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 or 60 or 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 an innovative way
to evaluate the perils of these and other dangerous roads-- a state of the art
highway simulator. Drivers sit in a
full-sized car and view an eight-foot high display
with a wraparound 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
rearview 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 and 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. Trouble spots
abound in one nation 7,000 miles from America,
where more drivers are killed annually than
anywhere else on earth. Fasten your seatbelts. usic] Statistically, the most
dangerous roads on earth are in third world and
developing nations. More than 85% of all road
traffic deaths occur there. No country suffered more traffic
fatalities in 2007 than China. 104,000 perished, nearly
2 and 1/2 times more than in the United States, with
38% fewer vehicles on the road. And China, which
has approximately 2% of the world's drivers, they
actually account for 14% to 15% of the world's
traffic fatalities. NARRATOR: India's fatality
rate ranks second. In 2003, 81,000 people
died on its roads. By 2007, the death
toll rose to 98,000, with an estimated 2,000,000
seriously injured. Roads in the developing world
in 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 them. 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. You have passenger vehicles. You have trucks. You have pedestrians. You have rickshaws. You have cyclers, 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 flooded roads every year, from a generation
with virtually no car culture heritage. The US and in
Western Europe, you had generations that
have operated vehicles, so people have almost
a cultural instinct on what you do when you get
behind the 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 superhighways, 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 at 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 almost 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 can communicate with our client. NARRATOR: These
models allow engineers to dissect the flaws of
existing roads or highways and determine how they can
reconfigure them to improve traffic flow. A major focus of companies like
Arcadis is urban intersections. Globally, most traffic accidents
occur at 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 much congestion that everybody wants to
get to their destination as soon as possible, so they 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-- 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 signal phases at the main intersection. NARRATOR: Adding
well-coordinated signal systems at problematic
intersections, like this one, not only helps mitigate the
danger to drivers, but also to pedestrians. Deficient intersection
design encourages jaywalking. And half of all traffic
fatalities in developing nations involve pedestrians. In addition to the roadway
design for particular 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 to get their own signal phase as well. So that can safely and
efficiently move the pedestrian safely through an intersection
and avoiding conflict. NARRATOR: Avoiding conflict
is the last thing on the minds of these risk-takers, who
create their own version of a dangerous
road and flip over the prospect of navigating. of dangerous road The mod isn't a road at
all it's off-road. [music playing] And a special breed
of competitors, like this bunch outside
of Cedar City, Utah, is pushing the boundaries of
off-roading to new heights. They relish the challenge of
maneuvering highly modified trucks, or buggies, over terrain
that most casual off-roaders would consider
impossible to navigate. Their sport, haply enough,
is called rock crawling. It feels like a roller
coaster every single course. You know, a lot of new
people come out and watch and they think,
man, this is insane. 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 them. They want to be pushed
to do something extreme, not just go out and do the
same thing everyone else is. 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 some place, and
we're just trying to drive up the most extreme
thing the course designer can think of. NARRATOR: Nicole
Johnson, a mother of two, 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. And when you're coming
off of something steep, you just see ground and you just
hope you can run it out and not roll. OK, drive forward. Three wheels! 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. Look 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
is built. And you can kind of tell
that, OK, we got it, or no, we got to back off. Steer me. OK, stop. The driver might
get all of the glory, but it's the spotter that
does all of the work. The spotter, the poor guy, has
got to 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-- This way. Turn your wheels. 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's
in a bad position, they could get run over. NARRATOR: For Nicole
and Frank, the secret to minimizing the danger is
trust and good communication. Drive forward. It doesn't feel right. Drive forward. There you go. You really have to trust. Sometimes a car
feels really weird. Feels like you're going to
roll when you're really not. He can tell if it's going to. Turn it down.
Turn it down. Down this way? Yeah. Your ass hand has to
be that way, 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 it left. That's right. Go right, whatever that is. But it's all water under
the bridge at that point. We're here to have fun,
and that's what it's about. We had a lot of fights today,
but you know, we're smiling. [laughs] It's all good. It's good. NARRATOR: Feeling good
teamwork, competitors counter the sports 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. 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 seatbelt that we can get. NARRATOR: And these
modified monsters also sport 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. This is what keeps us
clinging to those rocks. On those side hills,
on those big climbs, this is what gets us up there. 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 lowers simply
provide support. This particular suspension gives
us great movement up and down for real 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. When you're hanging
off these cliffs and you're looking down,
ready to roll a vehicle, or you're leaning sideways and
having to 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 sportsmen, the more clear
and present danger may lurk when they
rejoin the rest of us, on the established roads. No need to seek out danger here. Sooner or later,
it will find us. Just like that, see? Just like that.
