So Many People Are Too Scared to Drive Into the U.P. That the Bridge Will Send Someone to Do It for Them

The Mighty Mac is five miles long and 200 feet over the water, with a center lane you can see straight through. No wonder some folks can’t do it themselves. Press play.

Every year, more than a thousand people pull up to the Mackinac Bridge, take one look, and decide they physically cannot drive across it.

So someone else does it for them.

That’s the Mackinac Bridge — the Mighty Mac — the five-mile span that’s the only road connecting Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. If you’re driving into the U.P., this is how you get there.

And it’s a lot of bridge. The deck sits about 200 feet above the Straits of Mackinac, the towers rise more than 550 feet, and in a strong wind the whole thing is built to flex as much as 35 feet side to side. That’s not a fault — it’s the design. A stiff bridge would crack. This one moves with the wind.

Then there’s the part that really gets people. The two inner lanes of the center span aren’t pavement at all — they’re open steel grating. Glance down while you’re driving and you can see straight through the road to the water far below.

Are people really that scared of the Mackinac Bridge?

Scared enough that the bridge runs a whole program for it. If you get up there and freeze — and roughly 1,200 to 1,400 people a year do exactly that — you can call ahead and a staff member will hop in and drive your car across while you ride in the passenger seat, eyes shut if you want. There’s even a word for it: gephyrophobia, the fear of crossing bridges.

For everyone else, it’s one of the great drives in the Midwest — Lake Huron on one side, Lake Michigan on the other, and the whole of the U.P. opening up in front of you. It’s the same peninsula that’s home to the busiest locks in the world and the loneliest lighthouse in America.

Five miles long, 200 feet up, see-through in the middle. Welcome to the U.P. — assuming you can make it across.

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