Now that it’s a new year, Fridays I’ll still post something that is (supposed to be) humorous. These posts are furthermore still tagged “Friday Fun,” even though I’m no longer including the “Friday Fun” tag in the subject.

There’s a game I play sometimes while I’m driving, called “SUV, Not SUV.” Because I bet there’s some sound, psychological explanation why people who drive SUV’s are more likely to be assholes behind the wheel.

The rules of the game are pretty straightforward: whenever another vehicle cuts you off, you say “SUV” if it was an SUV, or “Not SUV,” if it wasn’t. Then you count how many of each you got and marvel at how many Not-SUV’s there were.

I have a dream, in which millions of people start posting messages like “1 #SUV, 3 #NotSUV” on Twitter. I’m such a geek.

Of course, even in a game as simple and straightforward as this, there are edge-cases. The rule is that “cut off” means that the other vehicle pulled in front of you, or threatened to do so, in such a way that you had to apply your breaks or swerve to avoid a collision. And it only counts if you yourself were not breaking traffic laws at the time, like running a red light, or going 50 in a 25-mile-an-hour zone. And you can only blame the other driver if he’s really doing something that he could be cited for, were there an accident.

Let’s practice:

The situation is exacerbated at rotaries. For those of you who may not be familiar with the Boston rotary, it is a complex, multilateral intersecting way, with no stop signs, at which everyone goes at the same time, and the biggest vehicle always wins. This is why so many Boston drivers, especially those from the suburbs, drive SUV’s.

A rotary usually has three to five entrances, and up to 30 exits, depending on how many times you go around before getting dizzy. This is usually only a problem for out-of-towners, who get on a rotary and then frequently get lost. So they go around and around and around, always looking for the right exit to take, but never finding it. I once heard of a man from Nebraska who couldn’t find his way off a Boston rotary and continued driving around it until he grew old and died.

Then there are traffic signals.

Nothing requires so keen a notice, so focused a concentration, so large and intimidating a vehicle, as does driving in Boston.

When we first moved to Boston from western Pennsylvania, we were both intrigued and horrified to see public roadways under construction, with potholes dug the size of the Great Lakes and manhole covers raised as tall as Flathead Mesa. Well, since I was just a boy at the time, maybe the potholes and manhole covers seemed a little bigger than they actually were. But the roads were conspicuously marked with signs–and this is actually true–“Danger! Proceed at your own risk!” Well, perhaps the signs didn’t have exclamation points, but they might as well have, because they made me feel as though we were about to drive off the edge of the continent and might fall into the ocean. (I had heard that Boston was close to the ocean.)

(As I’m sure someone is going to mention, these signs are only posted in some areas on New England, such as Connecticut. In the Boston area, the roads and construction and possibility for automobile damage is the same, but the explicit warning is missing.)

I recall my father oh so cautiously proceeding down these roadways, carefully weaving between potholes and manhole covers, the tires grinding against the unfinished roadway as we putted down this dangerous avenue. Meanwhile, the native Bostononians flew by us at highway speed, cursing us as they went, clearly unafraid of falling into the ocean. But then again, having grown up in the area, they probably intuitively knew where the edge was.

That was almost 25 years ago, and since then I’ve gotten my own genuine Massachusetts driver’s license, learned how to navigate the roads here, and even how to assert myself behind the wheel of a car. And in the process, in all my years of driving in the Boston area, I’ve only gotten into five accidents.