Formula One's racing stars blanched when they left their hotel in the days before China's first Grand Prix in Shanghai. Rubens Barrichello, a speedy driver with nerves of steel, was close to coming a cropper before he even made the pits when a Shanghai taxi-driver whipped past him at speed, nearly upending the Brazilian.
Growing up with the arbitrary approach to the rules of the road in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paolo hadn't prepared him for China's mean streets. Drivers in Beijing don't drive as fast as their wannabe F1 ace counterparts in Shanghai, but the streets are a similar free-for-all.
As China's economy swells at an astonishing rate, the capital's traffic jams have become the stuff of legend, but gridlock is even more psychologically draining when you are constantly forced to swerve as people edge in front of you.
The law is to eat or be eaten in this motoring jungle. You quickly learn to grit your teeth and leave it up to your opponent to brake. Otherwise be prepared for long, tearful hours spent on one of the ring roads around this fast-growing metropolis.
China drives on the right, but that's the easy bit. Other things are harder to work out. Lanes are there for amusement and bicycle paths are where motorists hunt down cyclists. Right of way is with the person with the biggest SUV or the fastest little Xiali taxi. Pedestrian rights may be enshrined in the rule book, but it's a fool who will use a zebra crossing if there's a car within 15 kilometres of the faded black and white markings.
Passing your driving test always makes you feel good, but getting my licence in Beijing is a singular pleasure.
As a passenger in the back of a taxi, you ask yourself constantly if there is any rhyme, logic or reason to this mayhem. Actually there is a system, it's just it's rather quirky, as I discovered while doing the driving test.
A test in English, no less! Does Dublin Corporation offers a Chinese language written test? And it's difficult. You must get 90 per cent to pass this tricky, multiple choice exam done on a computer at a vehicle testing site.
The medical exam involved giving me the once-over to make sure I wasn't clearly psychotic. The sight exam involved reading a few numbers which were blurred on a piece of card. So far, so good.
The questions are largely common sense and the rules of the road are much in line with the rest of the world. Some, however, will be unfamiliar to the Irish driver - such as when you can turn left on red, or when, if ever, you should give way to pedestrians. According to the testing manual, you should always give way to people crossing the road, but I've never seen a car give way to a pedestrian. Ever.
Some questions are quite locally focused, such as - are you allowed to spit while driving the car (No); are you allowed to use your mobile phone (No); how much beer can you drink and then drive (A little); or what to do if you see someone lying on the road who's intestines are exposed after an accident (Emm, I can't remember).
The terms of the test remind you that China is still a developing economy, regardless of the number of SUVs crowding the streets. The rules have to be as understandable to someone driving a flat-bed tricycle as to someone moving down Chang'an Avenue in a top-of-the-range Range Rover.
I scraped through the test and immediately we bought a Beijing Jeep. This was one of the original joint-venture cars built with US Jeep technology specifically for the Chinese market.
It's a fantastic all-purpose vehicle which lacks some of the niceties of its purist Cherokee counterpart. It's eminently practical on the Chinese roads - spare parts are readily available, its big wheels will steer you out of most potholes and it's high off the ground.
You can look down at most of your road opponents - the domestically produced Xialis or the small Citroëns - and know that you will prevail if they ram you.
Black licence plates, specially reserved for foreigners, will help you steer out of trouble too. Nobody wants the hassle of dealing with a foreigner who may or may not speak Chinese and who may not have quite the same innate understanding of the rules of the Beijing roads that most residents have.
Because nobody ever gets up to any kind of speed on the city's roads, accidents are rarely that bad.
One of the many compensations of driving in China is the absence of the kind of malice you see in over-developed societies. The chances of someone getting red-faced and angry at your incompetence is minimal - the moral dimension is missing and people are forgiving because they rarely care about what anyone else is does on the roads.
I've driven for kilometres along the German autobahn with a man in a BMW driving alongside me who kept tapping his temple to show how stupid I was for lingering five seconds too long in the fast lane, where he was now happily ensconced - though he clearly wasn't in such a rush that he didn't have plenty of time for a couple of minutes of moral instruction.
A similar thing happened in Goatstown when, lost, I needed to change lane at the last minute. My apologies to the irate driver who followed me three-quarters of the way home flashing his lights at me. I might also tell him he was easily 30 years too old to be driving a little red runabout and should keep his mid-life crisis to himself.
Here in China, people have short memories when it comes to punishing traffic transgressions with obscene references to your sanity or intelligence. Good thing too, because in a country of 1.3 billion road rage on such a grand scale would be terrifying.
Driving in China gives insights into the psychology of the people you live among. For instance, one of the most popular radio shows in Beijing is a drive-time show where motorists, many of them taxi drivers, ring in with queries about car parts, petrol queues, all kinds of motoring questions. No music, just motoring. Fantastic.
And, once you do get into the car, it opens up all kinds of possibilities. Visits to more obscure, but fascinating, sections of the Great Wall become an easy option. The Fragrant Hills just to the west of the capital are a pleasant drive along good roads. Little Buddhist temples tucked away in the mountains surrounding Beijing are easily reachable.
Traffic is hell, and consistency rare, but China motoring is great fun.