My mom worries about me. Like most people on the outside looking in, she thinks Indonesia is a dangerous place, what with the riots and all, to say nothing of the odd guerrilla war. Truth be told, there aren't as many riots as it may sometimes appear, and when there are big demonstrations, they are usually more of a nuisance than a risk. But what my mother doesn't know (until she reads this) is that her concerns may well be justified. Not because of the politics, as messy as they are, but because of the traffic.

I remember someone from the World Health Organization telling me just after I arrived in Jakarta from Canada, full of vaccines, that most expats worry too much about getting exotic diseases when the greatest threat to life and limb involves road accidents. Touch wood, so far we have avoided, by luck or skill, any serious mishaps, though our car was sideswiped once by a Jakarta bus that swerved abruptly into what we thought was our lane. But we have occasion on some weekends to drive the Jakarta-Bogor toll road, and I must admit, it scares the livin' daylight out of me.

It's not that I am some road virgin who's never before seen a highway busier than the gravel road that led to my uncle's farm in southern Saskatchewan, which is a place in Canada for those who do not know. I've handled rush-hour in Paris and Mexico City, picked my way through Manhattan gridlock and happily navigated Italian autostradas. I've driven through snowstorms where you can't see the front of the car and driven along twisting mountain roads wondering if there's a patch of unseen black ice on the next curve. I love driving, have done it since I was a kid, and hardly anything scares me -- except the Jakarta-Bogor toll road.

It's not any particular thing, but the whole package. BMWs or Mercedes zip along at 140 or 150 kph, while impossibly overloaded trucks amble along at 30 kph. And though there are signs warning drivers of the risks of passing on the shoulders, driver use both shoulders as passing lanes. Woe to anyone whose car has broken down on the side of the road. (Traffic signs seem to be advisory only. My favorite is the one that says that in this particular area, traffic laws are actually enforced. It's never true.) Then there is the matter of tailgating. Bus drivers especially are never happy unless they are a just few centimeters off your back bumper at speeds of 100 kph-plus. Drivers also like to make extra lanes, usually while passing, by squeezing between vehicles in the middle of their own lanes. Then, with all this going on, there are people running across the road, just to make everything that much more exciting.

Where are the police as this mayhem unfolds? Good question. The company that runs the toll road says 31 police officers are on duty every day. I don't know where they're hiding when I am on the road because in the two years I have lived in Indonesia, I can count the number of police cars I have seen on the roads (not counting the multitude of cars and motorcycles that escort the presidential motorcade).

But here's the best bit. Most Indonesian drivers have never passed a driving exam. It's the custom here to bribe the people who give out licenses. You see, it does away with the bother of having to learn the basics and then be tested on them. This means the folks behind the wheel performing these death-defying maneuvers don't really know how to drive.

Death is not always defied. In the first six months of this year, 17 people were killed along the 48-km stretch of the Bogor-Jakarta toll road. And that doesn't include those who died of fright.