IKN

C’mon, join in the chorus folks;
“Macho macho man…i wanna be a macho man..”

Mar Del Plata is the place Buenos Aires goes to in January. The country’s biggest seaside resort gets an enormous influx of Porteños every January and February that want to forget about big city life for a couple of weeks and kick back and do some serious R&R, Argentine style.

Unfortunately, the typical Argentine macho man’s idea of relaxation includes acting like a complete asshole. This report caught my eye yesterday in Argentina’s Clarin national daily that tells how police in Mardel carried out a breath test campaign on drivers over the weekend. The result was that so many drivers failed the alcohol test (0.5mg/l) that the police compound quickly overflowed with the 60 confiscated cars and they had to park them on the roads around the lot. These breath tests are part of a brand new campaign tied to a new points system of road infractions, and it’s a system that has had the average boludo on the street moaning and whinging about civil liberties.

Argentina is not a serious country, but that’s not because of its government; it has the jokers that it has in office because they’re all the idiot population deserves. Take a look at this chart that shows just how many people die on the roads in Argentina every year.

In 2008, they managed to kill 8,205 people, 40% of whom popped their clogs in the Buenos Aires province. That’s over 22 people per day. Or to give you a different perspective here’s a comparative chart for the year 2006.

Worldwide, transit accidents is number nine in the list of people killing activities. In Argentina it’s number three. It’s just a damned pity that it doesn’t just kill the moronic macho “I’m a better driver with a drink inside me” criminals who think they’re normal. If it did it’d kill two birds with one stone (pardon the pun).

Two final thoughts:

• Gov’t studies in Urban Argentina show that women drivers use their seat belts 49% more often than men. Women also break red lights 52% less often than men. The guilty are men, not women.

• Personally speaking, I’ve seen plenty of LatAm in my time and know that in most parts the driving is reckless (compared to up North, at least). However IMHO Argentinians are the worst of the lot. They all want to be Fangio. Just google the words “picada auto Argentina” and see what I mean. No doubt there will be 8,000 fewer of them next year.