Traffic policewoman Maria Luisa Calderon requested a cab driver to move along as he was taking his time picking up a passenger in heavy traffic. His reaction: he turned on his high beams and floored the accelerator, slamming her on the ground, ripping her face and ankle as he raced off.

This is a typical scene of a macho backlash on Lima's street as women have replaced most male traffic-officers. This was done in the late 1990's in an effort to give law enforcement a gentler face.

Eighteen months after the incident, Calderon told the AP, "The gentleman got away. They never captured him because I couldn't get his license plate number."

Apparently Lima's efforts to tame its wild drivers is not working: Eighty percent of the 405 incidents reported in the last two years involved one of the 1031 female police (approximately a third of them), who have been cursed, shoved, punched, dragged, run over or taken hostage by angry men. Interestingly, cabbies and bus drivers are the worst offenders.

The police are blaming weak laws for what is happening to them. Calderon say, "[A driver in Lima] can do to us whatever he likes and the laws don't back us up."

Lima's deputy transit police chief Vicenzo Ieva told the AP, "What that means is that no one is doing time for these cases."

A University of San Marcos study has attributed the road rage to an excess of cabbies and aging microbuses and vans called "killer combis" that are running over pedestrians as well.

Author of the study, Carlos Ponce, who interviewed 491 public transportation drivers and 249 regular motorists told the AP, "Run over a traffic policewoman - they don't care."

He concluded, "The worst-behaved motorists are the taxi drivers, followed by the bus drivers and then us private motorists."

"We aren't saints, and something needs to be done about it."