Imagine pointing your car at the horizon, straightening the steering wheel, and then barely touching it again for two solid hours. No curves. No junctions. Just a ruler line of asphalt cutting across empty desert.
That is the reality of Highway 10 in Saudi Arabia. A 240 kilometer segment between Haradh and the Al Batha border crossing holds the official world record for the longest perfectly straight road, with no noticeable bends or gradients and an estimated driving time of about two hours.
A world record carved into the Empty Quarter
Highway 10 runs roughly 1,480 kilometers from Ad Darb on the Red Sea to the frontier with the United Arab Emirates, but the famous straight lies deep in the desert between Haradh and Al Batha. It was originally built as a private road for King Fahd and later opened to the public as part of the national highway network.
The road slices through the vast Rub’ al Khali, the world’s largest continuous sand desert. With no mountains to skirt and no valleys to bridge, engineers could simply draw a near perfect line across the sand.
The result is a fully paved corridor, mostly two lanes in each direction, used heavily by freight trucks moving goods between central and western Saudi regions and the UAE.
There is even a small debate over the exact length. The record held by Guinness World Records recognizes a 240 kilometer straight, while some regional outlets and mapping enthusiasts report around 255 to 256 kilometers, depending on how they define the endpoints. Either way, it comfortably beats anything else on the planet.
When a road becomes a monotony machine
On paper, driving this stretch sounds easy. Set the cruise control, keep the wheel steady, let the kilometers slide by. In practice, experts warn that roads like this are almost perfect laboratories for fatigue.
Studies on monotonous highways show that a lack of visual variety and the need to stare at the same unchanging scene can lower arousal, slow reactions, and increase tiny steering errors over time.
Researchers sometimes refer to an almost trance-like state that can appear on long, uneventful highway runs, where drivers struggle to remember parts of the journey and react more slowly to unexpected events.
A European road safety review supported by the European Commission notes that long periods behind the wheel, combined with monotonous road environments, clearly raise the risk of fatigue related crashes and especially affect professional and truck drivers.
That is exactly the profile of Highway 10, which carries a constant flow of heavy vehicles in a setting where the landscape barely changes from one minute to the next.
Add desert realities to the mix. Sun glare on a cloudless afternoon, cabin air that dries your eyes, and the knowledge that the next fuel stop is far away can all chip away at concentration. Occasional stray camels reported along desert highways become more dangerous when a drowsy driver notices them a second too late.
Safety upgrades on a hypnotic highway
Saudi authorities are not blind to these risks. An official profile on Saudipedia explains that the Ministry of Transport and Logistics has upgraded Highway 10 with asphalted shoulders, improved side slopes, clearly painted edges and medians, reflective markers known as “cat’s eyes”, protective barriers, kilometer posts, and a dense mix of directional and warning signs.
Speed limits vary by road type. On express sections of Highway 10, small cars can travel up to 120 km per hour, buses up to 100, and trucks up to 80, while dual carriageway segments are capped slightly lower for light vehicles.
Travel guidance stresses that radar cameras are active along the route, so ignoring the limit can quickly turn a minimalist desert drive into an expensive one.
More broadly, Saudi regulators have introduced a national Saudi Highway Code and a new Road Code covering design, safety audits, lighting, and rumble strips, with the goal of cutting road deaths to fewer than five per 100,000 people by 2030. Highway 10 fits into that wider push to make high-speed travel safer even on the most extreme stretches of tarmac.
From Australia’s Nullarbor to the Empty Quarter
Before Highway 10 claimed the crown, drivers often pointed to Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia. Its famous “90 Mile Straight” runs for about 146.6 kilometers without a single bend and is still celebrated on roadside signs as the longest straight in the country.
Interestingly, when parts of Eyre Highway were realigned, engineers deliberately avoided even longer dead straight sections to limit boredom, sun glare, and fatigue. Highway 10 went the opposite way, taking advantage of the completely flat desert to maximize directness and cut travel time for freight.
A road trip that is really a mental marathon
For adventurous drivers, the record breaker can look like the ultimate bucket list road. A desert run where the line of asphalt is so straight it might as well have been drawn with a ruler. Travel guidance stresses that preparation matters more than courage, though.
Fuel up early, carry extra water, share the driving if possible, and avoid tackling the straight when already tired.
At the end of the day, Highway 10 is both an engineering statement and a reminder of human limits. The road makes steering easy, but staying fully awake and focused in that endless sameness is the real challenge.
The official statement was published on the Guinness World Records website.
