Aggravation of the Month

The award goes to... (drumroll) ...SOME Volvo drivers.

The world's safest car is driven by SOME people who really believe the hype. They bought the branding, they bought the car, and now they believe that they travel inside of a protective bubble wherein nothing can possibly harm them, no matter how badly they drive.

I was coming down Brattle Street this morning, for instance, doing the speed limit (behind another car that was doing the speed limit), which is 25 miles an hour. In my rear-view I saw a Volvo driver come whizzing up behind me out of nowhere, and proceed to tailgate me most of the way down the hill.

My first thought was that he was probably a resident of Holden, the "Count On Us To Care" town, where the women are strong, the men are gentle, and all the children are above average. But then I remembered that the logo for the Volvo is the sign of Mars, and the symbol for the male gender...

A subliminal message for the natively aggressive driver, no doubt.

I wouldn't buy a Volvo in a million years, but not because I don't like the symbol.

I'm a guy.

I would very much like to have that symbol on the front grill of my car.

But after Sixteen Candles, where Molly Ringwald's character offers the boy she's nuts about a ride by saying, "I'll pick you up my vulva... er, ah... Volvo..." Well, I just can't bring myself to covet the car.

A few years ago, a woman driving a Volvo station wagon went into road rage at me for failing to give up the right of way as she raced up from behind me on my left to pass me, in order to take a right that was about two inches in front of me. She tailgated me all the way up the on-ramp to I-290, and then at the end of the ramp she nailed it past me and into the middle lane of traffic, causing other cars to swerve out of the way. As luck would have it, a State Trooper saw the whole thing and pulled her over. As I came up to the scene at the side of the road, that's when I saw the "Baby On Board" sign in her back window, and the two OCCUPIED child seats in the back.

Granted, such insane behavior on the roads is done by drivers of all sorts of different brands of cars. But I have to say that I notice a lot more Volvo drivers seem to really believe that they can never get hurt while driving that particular brand.