It goes back a long way too. The ubiquitous three-point seat belt was invented at Volvo. Rather than keep it for themselves as a competitive advantage, they opened the patent so everyone could benefit.
I think the soccer mom image comes from their lack of "sport" focused cars. I looked at their lineup and saw nothing that looked "aggressive" or "sporty". All of the cars looked pretty even keel middle of the road "nice".
There are a couple of sporty offerings [1] from their in-house tuning company, Polestar (like AMG for Mercedes, etc.). And the 240 Turbo is still a entry-level rally favorite in Scandinavia. You can easily get 300 bhp, 50/50 weight distribution, manual shift and rear-wheel drive in a '94 model for about $6000, then spend about $1500 prepping it for the entry level rally class. (There is an even cheaper rally class called "Folkrally", where there is a rule to keep the cost down that says at the end of the race, anyone can offer to buy your car for $1700, and you're not allowed to refuse or you lose your rally licence.)
It could be argued that not building cars that look "aggressive" is a reflection of their culture of safety.
In my view, driving on public roadways should be maximally safe (and thus deeply boring); if you want to treat driving as a sport, then head to a track. Disclaimer: I own a Volvo :)
I believe this was a change in the last maybe 10 years. Before the current line-up of S40's and S60's, their cars looked almost offensively boring (to me); and, with ugly faces. With the new S40's and S60's, I think they are downright pleasant to look at.
This may be my perception of that particular coming out of an old generation of looks, and catching up to the current one, though.
Please tell me you are joking or at the very least you are a paid spokesperson for Volvo. This is a goal that the hammer division of Stanley Tools will never be able to accomplish; and they make a product that does not contain any logic circuits, its just mass at the end of a stick.
ADDENDUM: Nuance Elimination
In addition to the problem of "user error" I do not think that Volvo is going to be the first company that creates a 100% error free product design, operates a production line that never suffers from quality control issues and masters supply chain management to such an extent they never utilize faulty/defective components from third parties. Finally there is also the "Eve and Mallory" problem. Do we really need to have a discussion on HN about the likelihood of unhackable firmware/software?
Never seriously injuring or killing requires absolute perfection in every aspect of design and implementation. In my opinion merely entertaining the possibility of that level of perfection requires a terrifying amount of hubris.
Are you saying that since a car is more complex than a hammer, and not even Stanley can control what the end user does with the hammer, therefore cars will always kill? Wouldn't the fact that Volvo's products actually have logic help them reach their goal vs. a hammer?
While they seem to be thought of as an old soccer-mom type car company, I personally think of them very highly.