A word or two on driving in BA

As many of you know, years ago I was a NYC taxi driver. The yellow cabbie has an almost-legendary place in American urban lore and is, in fact, known beyond the borders of the U.S. And yet compared to BA, driving a yellow cab is like floating in a heated swimming pool: slow, calm, peaceful.

The cars here, taxis and regular cars alike are small, loud, fast and dangerous. I assume there is some kind of goverment rationing of headlights as no car here actually has both a left and a right functioning headlight and many seem to have neither. Not the case with their horns, however. I suppose that taxi drivers are great slalom skiers as they are most adept at coming as close to oncoming objects, be they other cars, pedestrians, whatever, but yet still manage to miss them by just a hair. (No time penalty on that run, bravo!) As Laura (porteña back home) warned me, drivers pay little heed to traffic lights and the stop signs (Pare!) are absolutely meaningless. To say that the pedestrian never has the right of way would be an understatement. He or she is, rather, invisible. Just keeps us all that much on our toes, right?