Well jon, welcome to south america. The driving you experienced is not an Ecuadorian thing, it is all of south america. Sure there are slight variations, some places there is a little less horn than others, but everywhere has reckless abandon. I just put my faith in that my driver and every other driver doesn't want to die quite yet. Once you get to a reasonably sized city you will come to realize that stop signs and or lights are an unneccesary expense when you can just honk at intersections and hope for the best. This is assuming a nice 4 way intersection (if you are lucky two one way streets intersecting) but try a traffic circle or loose aproximation and you may end up soiling your cab's back seat (or just closing your eyes and screaming like sarah does). I kind of like to think of it as a cheap playland ride with higher stakes :)