The 229th time I scraped the bottom of our Volkswagen over a tope — Mexico’s brand of speed bump — I swore as though I’d just been rear-ended by a truck.

There was no sign to warn of the giant mound of pavement, which meant that I hit the thing at full-on launch velocity. And its size practically guaranteed damage: In my rearview mirror, I could see deep lines scraped by my car’s chassis and many others before me.

Must have just been poorly fashioned, you say? A mistake? If only.

There are thousands, maybe millions, of these misshapen risers on back roads and highways all over Mexico. The biggest of the bunch look like Fernando Botero sculptures before he slimmed them down.