Take heed from The Simpsons’ Canyonero

Jennifer Ditlevson Haglund

Now that I’ve driven in dark, unpaved and unmarked roads in Iowa at dusk, some of the crowded and shadier parts of New York, blizzard conditions in Ohio, the slimmest dirt roads in France, and Texas desert, I’ve learned what to fear while directing a vehicle. Striking pedestrians, being hit by drunk or distracted drivers, and ticking off someone with road rage and a gun top my list.

On my most recent road trip, however, I might have added another — drivers of the Kia Soul.

For reasons I have yet to determine, that subcompact crossover seems to affect its drivers similar to how the Canyonero transformed the usually level-headed cartoon matriarch Marge Simpson into an engine for road rage in the 1999 episode “Screaming Yellow Honkers.” For those who haven’t seen it, I recommend viewing it both as entertainment and cautionary tale.

Somewhere on a detour in the Pocono Mountains, a woman annoyed with the traffic caused by construction cut in front of me and made an illegal U-turn to take an alternate route. Shocked, I looked into the car to see who would pull such a dangerous stunt on a narrow two-lane highway. It was a slim, middle-aged woman with big, blond hair flipping me off and cursing me as she sped in the opposite direction.

If she had been the only Kia Soul driver to do something like that on the journey, I might have let go of connecting the model with danger. The next run-in occurred closer to the Ohio–Pennsylvania border, where I passed through a small town upon granting my toddler’s request for a potty break.

Again stopped for some unpredictable but typical road maintenance, I waited longer than expected at a light for a worker with a bright orange flag to wave me on my way. For nearly 30 seconds, I had to put up with a sustained, angry horn blast coming from behind me. Before I could fully release the brake and begin to drive, the silver box resembling a small food delivery van designed by neofuturists passed me on the right. And another Kia Soul operator fumed at me. At least this one kept all her fingers curled into her angry fist.

Imaginative and investigative minds need to watch making leaps of logic, but after that second encounter, I started watching out for those wheeled cubes zooming in and out of my sight.

I made it to my brother’s house in Ohio without any further problems. We discussed our plans, walked the dogs, and put my daughter to bed. My mother, who lives an hour south, surprised me. She would spend the next day with me while my brother and my sister-in-law worked.

Before 9 a.m., we were ready to leave the house. As I started the engine, I looked in my rearview mirror and spotted another one of those devil machines with my mother in the driver’s seat smiling and assuring me that she could see me and would pull her car back into the driveway in our game of vehicular musical chairs.

I’d forgotten about her new car, and suddenly I was worried that I should warn her and send her a link to what caused Ms. Simpson to take a defensive driving course. But most know my mother to be a sweet, funny, and polite woman, and I would expect nothing less of her comportment while she’s driving that car. I might be overreacting and digging for connections.

However, I should add that my concerns about the Soul and its drivers might not be entirely unfounded. On Friday, a woman named Elizabeth Trevor was apprehended in Manhattan Beach, California, for reckless driving and evading a peace officer from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m. Throughout the wild chase, Trevor crossed over the median into rush-hour traffic the wrong way. It took an officer steering into the rear of the chased vehicle to stop and arrest the driver.

This wouldn’t interest me if she weren’t driving a white Kia Soul. There’s something to it, even though I can’t figure it out. The recent commercial for the 2017 Soul Turbo featured a speedy hamster racing through a hospital to Motörhead’s classic “Ace of Spades” and jumping off the roof into its family car. I’ve never driven one, but maybe that’s what happens behind the wheel, and it’s just too liberating to resist the temptation to release your demons on the road. I can’t afford to get into any trouble, so if the opportunity arises to test the theory, I’ll have to pass.

Jennifer Ditlevson Haglund is a former news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum, now living and writing in New York City.