This is no ordinary traffic light. On the Pan-American Highway, near several exits in Argentina, some drivers no longer roll down their windows out of fear.
The method is simple and perverse: a windshield cleaner approaches and offers a service no one asked for, and if you don’t pay, the glass or bodywork ends up paying the price. Witnesses describe blows with the same cleaning cloths, deliberate scratches, and even broken mirrors as a form of immediate retaliation. This is neither an accident nor an isolated incident: it is extortion that repeats in a pattern, crossing after crossing, traffic light after traffic light.
What is most infuriating is not just the material damage, but the feeling of helplessness: no one intervenes, there is no visible oversight, and whoever resists pays with their car. Meanwhile, every driver traveling that route wonders the same thing: how long will it be before someone does something, before this ends even worse?