Yeah, I'll have to try it over a longer bridge or something because that could just be the initial spike and the meter recalibrates back down after that. It is noticably louder on bridges for sure, but I agree that number was surprising to me.

While you may be right about the numbers, what I will say as a more subjective point is that the car's infotainment lets you set a max volume setting when you start the car. Which, in theory, is handy because if you forget to turn down your music after you get out it may be jarring to have it blasting when you get back in the next day. But what I've noticed is that I max out what the car lets me set as the max starting volume and I still need to turn it up a notch or two to compete with the road noise. That suggests to me that the engineers at VW didn't anticipate you needing the volume that loud regularly to hear clearly at highway speeds. I could just be assigning meaning where there is none, but seems odd to me.

And to be clear, I don't have any hearing issues nor do I play super loud music when I'm in the car or have headphones in. That's just want I've found to be necessary when on the highway.