"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." — Louis-Hector Berlioz

Sometimes I feel like that.

But not because of my innocent students slumping before me on a Monday morning (ready to learn English with all the fizz and verve of cold laver bread). It's because I've just arrived at work after driving through a vicious hellstorm of merciless Chilean traffic that snakes and screams through the towering Santiago suburbs and sneezes me out into the nuclear industrial wasteland where I teach.

And it's not the fact that there is heavy traffic that ignites the gas that boils my rage.

Picture that famous video of OJ Simpson screaming down a hot LA highway in his swerving, careering Bronco as terrified drivers jump out of the way of the way – his wheels burning, exhaust shaking, brakes screeching.

Well, that's how an average Santiago Chilean drives to work.

My mother would tell you that I'm not the safest driver around but these guys make me look like a little lamb in my wife's Corsa as I rattle up the Pan-American Highway in a knitted jumper trying to remember the difference between the past perfect simple and its continuous sibling.

I try not to let the constant, pointless use of the horn, the aggressive flashing of lights, the limpet tailgating and constant aggressive undertaking get to me. But it is hard. It's damned hard; though I have to admit I'm starting to let all this motoring madness wash over me as these last few weeks have passed by.

Having said all that, I've learned that the single biggest danger to a foreigner deciding to get behind the wheel in Santiago is not the cavalier attitude of the guy in the other car to rules, life and safety– it's the potholes. Those unmarked monsters that litter every road and street in the capital. And I'm talking potholes the size, depth and quality of a Hyper Value paddling pool.

Two metres in diameter is common. They lose their shape and fall apart in the rain, too. Daily I have to screech to a halt, close my eyes and swerve or just slow down and accept my fate in the tarmac depths and re-emerge from these potholes of death that never get fixed.

Now I know why everyone except me has a 4x4.

I'm not even going to get into the umarked, unpainted, unnecessary speed humps that we've hit on numerous occasions so far.

So, the next time you're waiting in the lights outside Sainsbury's or cursing the roadworks down Mumbles way, look at the smoothness of the road, appreciate the respect of your fellow driver, marvel at the orderliness of it all and then think of me and the horror...the horror!