Argentinos Juniors  1  Newell’s Old Boys  1

Of course we took neither rain jackets nor umbrellas. Why would we? It was a little overcast when we left home and the first half was clear and bright. It was only as the referee blew his whistle for the start of the second half that the first drops of rain fell. Then they fell and fell and fell. Something like 88mm came down in the space of a couple of hours, transforming several streets in Buenos Aires into rivers. The Argentinos Juniors’ pitch soon became a swamp and 21 minutes into the second half the game was called off.

When you’re wet, you’re wet. There is no shelter anywhere in the very basic Diego Armando Maradona stadium. When your pants, your socks and the contents of your wallet are all sodden, then you can’t get any wetter. But the fans kept singing and dancing in the rain.

The Newell’s fans had had a four-hour or so trip from Rosario with many arriving at half-time, just in time for the downpour. It was their first visit to Buenos Aires since the death of their 14-year-old fan, Walter Caceres, on the way back from a game in the capital two weeks ago. But while football violence is a very real and unresolved problem, by  far the greatest risk on the way home from any game, on the way to or from anywhere for that matter, is bad driving…especially with the roads flooded or slippery and visibility severely reduced.

Argentina ranks way up there on the league table of most dangerous drivers in the world. For every million cars on the road there are 1,066 deaths compared to 186 in the United States, 123 in Spain and 89 in Sweden. The holiday weekends are the worst when the TV screens and newspapers are full of images of pile-ups, smashed vehicles wrapped around trees and being pulled out of lakes and grieving friends and families.

The promising young River Plate attacker, Diego Buonanotte, was involved in a crash in December in which three close friends of his were killed. Buonanotte was thrown from the car and sustained serious injuries. He’ll survive but it’s not clear what the injuries will do to his footballing career. One of the first to visit him in hospital was the newly-elected River Plate president and World Cup winner, Daniel Passarella, who said all the right things. He showed genuine compassion, partly because he’d lost his own teenage son in a traffic accident.

Many Argentine families are still living with and trying to come to terms with the thirty-thousand people thought to have been killed by the military government in power between 1976 and 1983. But far more are grieving the loss of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters lost in pointless and often avoidable traffic accidents.

Argentines will find a whole series of excuses to explain this situation, from poorly-maintained roads to bad sign-posting to sub-standard vehicles. I’ve driven throughout the Americas and beyond and the roads are far worse in Bolivia, the sign-posting almost non-existent in Cuba and the vehicles infinitely crappier in Peru. The reason for Argentina’s motoring tragedy is simply bad driving. Arrogant, aggressive, inconsiderate driving.

A fine example is that of Rodrigo ‘The Hyena’ Barrios who last month shot round the corner in the seaside resort of Mar del Plata and killed a 20-year-old pregnant woman and her baby. He sped off and only hours later handed himself in to the police. He’s the world Super-Featherweight boxing champion, a national hero, now awaiting trial and unable to walk the streets for fear of the public spitting at him in the face.

I don’t own a car simply because I live in the centre of Buenos Aires which has an adequate public transport system and abundant taxis. But to many Argentines, especially the men, that’s like saying: “I don’t own a penis.” But when I need one, I hire one. A car! I’m obviously talking about a car!

It’s been a long-held, off the top of my head, un-scientific theory of mine that the way people in a certain country drive reflects, to a large extent, their national characteristics and hang-ups. I’m still trying to translate Argentine driving into some kind of coherent analysis of the national psyche. This is, after all, the country with more psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and therapists per head of population than there are llamas in Bolivia. But first I need to suppress my anger, my pedestrian rage, and this rant is a cathartic exercise in releasing some of my pent-up resentment at so often being nearly killed on the roads of Argentina. Sorry if you’re one of the decent Argentine drivers – and there are many – but I need to do this.

There’s a certain self-destructive element in the way some people drive and a definite tendency to blame every other motorist and pedestrian for breaches in traffic-flow. “Not me, no! I’m a very good driver.”

I hired a car over Christmas to escape Buenos Aires and visit the in-laws. I’d gone no more than 1km when, being the kind, considerate British driver that I am, I stopped at a pedestrian crossing because my light was red and little old ladies, mothers with pushchairs and blind people were crossing. Someone smashed into my rear end. When I got out to remonstrate, he was livid, with spittle flying like bullets from his mouth and veins on his temples ready to burst.

“If you weren’t there, I wouldn’t have hit you,” he shouted. “You should have been somewhere else.” True! Very, very true!

Now the people of Buenos Aires can be some of the politest, most courteous you’ll meet anywhere in the world. Good manners still matter here, especially among the older generation. In most countries you don’t converse with strangers in lifts, most of us content to fix our eyes on that big red spot on the top of that bald fellow’s head or to see how far down that cleavage we can peak without anyone noticing. But not here.

“Good morning, how are you?”

“I’m fine. What floor are you going to? Number 9? Lovely day, isn’t it?”

“It is. Thank-you. Have a good day. No, after you.”

“No, after you. You have a good day too. Goodbye.”

And all this in the 15 seconds it takes to get from the ground floor to the ninth. But you put these very same polite, courteous people behind the wheel of a car and those good manners evaporate into the humid Buenos Aires air. No-one let’s anyone out of side-turnings, people hoot their horns at railway crossings while the barriers are still down and red traffic lights are more often seen as a hindrance rather than a life-saving device.

On the open road, it’s common to sit just 1cm behind the car in front while driving at 140kph waiting for an opportunity to overtake. And that’s regularly done on blind corners and over the brow of hills.

There’s a common tendency in Argentina to disregard the smaller, what are sometimes seen as intrusive, rules and regulations. Seat-belts are compulsory but only sometimes worn, motor-cycle crash helmets even less so. Helmets are carried but usually on the rider’s elbow which means that while Argentine bikers often split their skulls open, they suffer far less elbow trauma than anywhere else in Latin America.

I’m a more frequent pedestrian than I am a motorist but that also has its hazards. When the crossing light is quite clearly telling me that I can proceed, vehicles turning from the left and right are also allowed to go – but should give way to pedestrians. Only they quite often don’t, especially if the vehicle is very big, like a bus or a truck. And I’ve had my ankles nipped more than once by barely attentive motorists in a hurry, babbling on their mobile phones.

But it doesn’t do to shout and swear. Oh no! You don’t see a great deal of open road rage. In fact, you’re considered to be a bit of a wimp if you complain. With one foot on the ground and another on the step, the 184 bus sped away with me grabbing onto the door frame for my life. When I complained to the driver he snorted derisively and retorted, very calmly: “You limp-wristed, nancy-boy wimp. Just grow up!” I’m not sure if that’s gained or lost something in translation but that’s the kind of abuse you leave yourself open to if you have the audacity to insist on being able to climb aboard a public bus without risking your life.

After four years here I’m now quite good at crossing the road. And when jumping on to a bus, I try to nip in front of that woman with the huge bag of shopping, so that if the driver does speed off prematurely it’s her, not me, left sprawling in the gutter. Hey! It’s a jungle out there and I’ve managed to survive this far.

That’s two Argentinos Juniors’ games out of four so far this season suspended because of heavy rain. I’m dripping rain water into the keyboard and seriously considering investing in an umbrella for the next game.

Note: Possibly one of the longest games in footballing history, taking ovethirty days to complete. The game kicked off on February 16 and was completed on March 17 with one 12 minute half then a 13minute second half. Argentinos Juniors took the lead after six minutes of the resumed match, Newell’s equalised in the second half. Few went to the stadium for the completion and almost no-one watched it on the tele. It was raining again.