WHEN Lizzie Post crammed into a Volkswagen Jetta last year for a three-day, cross-country road trip with a good friend and her cousin, plus a chinchilla named Bea and a cat named Denim, she knew far more was at stake than choosing the right fork or making proper introductions.
She had no doubt that road-trip etiquette could mean the difference between arriving at the destination still speaking to everyone or fantasizing about ditching a nettlesome passenger at the next rest stop.
It would be tough, she said, "if you were driving around as a vegan with a driver who considered himself king and stopped for burgers all the time." Post is the great-great-granddaughter of etiquette expert Emily Post and author of "How Do You Work This Life Thing?" "The real attitude you should take is, 'Let's make it a good trip for everyone.' The biggest problem would be the me-centric view."
When you consider that 85% of all U.S. travelers will be going by car this summer, according to the American Automobile Assn., and you think about all the competing personalities, you have the recipe for a brouhaha or two.
"If you don't discuss your driving habits, quirks, expectations and that sort of thing ahead of time, you will run into problems," said Post, 24.
Among the issues to discuss: Will the day end at 3 p.m. at a resort or will you drive until 2 a.m. and slide into a cheap motel? Is this a drive-through, fast-food crowd or one that wants sit-down dinners at nice restaurants? And what, for heaven's sake, is that racket coming from the car's sound system?
Those sorts of issues, the road-trip pros say, are best worked out at a meeting before anyone puts pedal to metal (even if it's all one family).
"It wouldn't be very fair if the front seat wanted to stop at the Ritz and the back seat could barely afford a cheap motel," says Colette Swan, owner of an etiquette school in Agoura Hills and the Manners From Heaven website, which offers free e-mail advice and, soon, etiquette podcasts and webcam tutorials.
She advocates meeting with everybody who's going on the trip, including children, beforehand and putting -- in writing -- the decisions about expenses, routes, overnight stops, meals and sightseeing, even if it's a family group.
"Everyone should get to have some say," she said, "make some choices."
