The Berkeley Business Woman

Car: Volvo Wagon
Driver: Berkeley Business Woman
Conversation: Greetings/Goodbyes/driver's comments to self
Radio: NPR Fresh Air

The ride this morning was mostly uneventful so maybe I should take this time to lay down the unspoken casual carpool rules. I'm not sure how the rules started or how they get passed on, but over time I suppose I picked them up from friends who also carpool. I guess it's a word of mouth rule system. I'll get to the ride itself later.

As the first rider to a car I get the choice of sitting in the front or the back and I always choose the back. The logic goes that if the driver is a talker she is more likely to start up conversation with the person in the front seat of the car. It's not that I'm antisocial in general, but we're talking about an early morning trip before I've had coffee. While I've experienced good conversation during the ride to the city, I'm mostly trying to have a buffer zone if the driver is a crazy (there are plenty). So from the back seat I can pretend not to hear the conversation and stare blankly at passing traffic if the talk goes south.

If there are three passengers waiting in line (the carpool minimum crossing the bridge is 3 people so a 4th is unnecessary) to be picked up and there aren't many cars that day, it is acceptable for the last person in line to hold up three fingers as a question to the driver ("will you take 3?"). It is the driver's generosity (or whether there's room) that dictates whether she will take 3.

If a woman is at the front of the line and a two-seater car pulls up, it is acceptable for her to pass her ride on to the next person in line. As a man, I'm obligated to get in to the two-seater if I'm the next person in line, but it puts me in the direct line of fire if the driver is a talker. This might be a personal thing, but I think it's more uncomfortable for two people to ride without talking than three people so if I see a two-seater I'm almost guaranteed to be in a conversation.

Once I'm in the car and seat belts are fastened, drivers are the only people that can start a conversation. In other words, if they don't initiate it, you're not supposed to speak. The only more or less mandatory comments (if you are a polite person) are the "Good morning!" as you enter the car and the "Thanks very much" at the end. The front seat passenger should always ask the back seat passenger if they have enough room and move his seat accordingly. At the end of the ride, it is acceptable to ask where the driver is going to see if you can get closer to your destination, but I usually just wait for the driver to offer.

Radio stations are up to the discretion of the driver, but the most common and accepted radio station is NPR. Other local news stations follow NPR in the pecking order, with music a distant third and silence an uncomfortable last.

Those are the (mostly) unspoken rules. As you will see here in the coming weeks, sometimes they're followed and sometimes they're not. Today's ride was pretty close to uneventful.

I was the first to get in to the Berkeley Business Woman's Volvo wagon ("Good morning!") so naturally, I chose the back seat. Less than a minute later a man got in the front seat and we were on our way. The NPR show was Fresh Air and today's subject was an interview with the writer of a new Muslim sitcom on Canadian TV. The driver didn't initiate any conversation so we sat and listened to the writer's experiences with people after they had seen the sitcom. It was clear early on that the driver was intrigued with the subject matter as she made little incredulous comments to herself and quietly laughed at some of the writer's thoughts and experiences in Muslim life that she conveyed through her show. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary happened and noone either offered or asked where the driver was going, so we got out at the common drop off point, just off the freeway ("Thanks so much.").

I walked to work.