I don’t want to try too hard to shove everything into a driving metaphor. It starts to feel forced. I feel okay introducing it in the middle of the second verse and riding it out – so to speak! As long as the central image (keep me in the backseat of your mind) makes sense and is sufficiently reinforced, I’m happy to be a bit vague. And I think “virtue” is an important word to introduce, as it hints at the moral context of the situation.

Two parts I think are weak are the line about the bullet and the one directly after. They are both vague and there is not enough room in the song to expand on them. Here are a couple ideas but I was having trouble figuring out the melody so I couldn’t sing them to make sure they fit, more just conceptual.

I’ve always been the one who got away
You weren’t up for a high speed chase

No double-yellow to line our path
You couldn’t afford the aftermath, still
The rear-view mirror tends to draw the eye
So sneak a peek now baby, don’t be shy

(the double-yellow could be anything else, just thinking of a road-related detail to line your path. I think the virtue/straight/narrow discussion is too vague).

For some reason this reminds me of a poem from my favorite book of poetry, Twice Removed by Ralph Angel, from your neck of the (non)woods. He uses so few words and yet says so much because details like the dull thud of windshield wipers explain everything.

THERE WAS A SILENCE

and then a greater more
unnerving will to laugh out loud,

a slashing rain
and then that moment in traffic when the dull

thud of windshield wipers
wholly isolates you,

when into a corner booth the raised
eyebrows of evening glimmer in our knowing,

photographs are taken—
you still feel dirty.

Guy, you may be right about the careless bullet line, and your substitution makes a lot of sense in the context of the song. Still, I like the idea of me being the bullet, and bouncing back into her life in a dangerous way. Maybe the metaphor is a tad obscure.