China's New Super-High, Super-Long Suspension Bridge: Not Recommended for Vertigo Sufferers

Folks who have trouble driving over the Golden Gate or New York's George Washington Bridge should probably just close this window now. The Aizhai Bridge in Hunan Province is so high and so long that a car careening off the side would take an excruciating 8 seconds to hit the earth, where presumably it would drive itself several feet deep like a bunker-buster.

Aizhai is located 20 minutes outside Jishou, a city of nearly 300,000 people whose history stretches back 2,000-plus years. The steep, curvy mountain roads have given the area's citizenry a traffic headache for as long as cars have existed – perhaps longer, in the case of pack-mule gridlock. This bridge, which opened to traffic last month after 5 years of construction, is meant to ease congestion by laying six lanes of Baotou–Maoming Expressway over the Dehang canyon. What was once a 4-hour slog between Jishou and Chadong is now a 1-hour trip, albeit one over a yawning abyss that would love nothing more than to swallow a careless driver.