In the Cellphone Zone, Cabbies and Passengers Drive Each Other Crazy

Everyone agrees it is awkward, no one can articulate why: "It does seem a bit rude?" passenger Andrew Battye ventures cautiously. "Because the customer is supposed to be the center of attention? And you might need to tell him where to go? But he's on his mobile?" Battye and his wife, Elizabeth, are visiting Washington from London. They also spent a weekend in New York, meekly trying to interrupt drivers long enough to announce that their hotel was two blocks ago.

Perhaps it boils down to an etiquette problem. Butting in on someone else's discussion should be done under only dire circumstances. Is an acceptable interruption . . . when you know of road construction ahead? When you speak Amharic and you feel you have something to add to the front-seat conversation?

What, exactly, does a cabdriver owe his passenger? Safe transport from A to B, or sparkling dialogue on the way? At UDC's Taxicab Drivers Program, 60 hours of coursework mandated for anyone interested in obtaining a hack license, cellphones are mentioned only in the context of safety: Instructor Johnny McCain encourages his drivers to pull over to the side of the road to conduct any conversations.

Um. Is McCain willing to admit that perhaps this pulling over does not always happen?

"Oh, yeah," he says. But then, he says, the cellphone is really important to the cabdriver's business. It's how he builds a regular clientele, gets directions to unfamiliar destinations. It shouldn't be at the expense of the customer, says McCain. "I always say the customer is always right even when he's as wrong as two left feet."

The thing is, there are some situations in which technology has already superseded human interaction. Metro riders jacked into their iPods, airplane seatmates watching rental movies on laptops -- we have accepted these as settings devoid of conversation; we no longer try to talk about the weather. We bury our noses in SkyMall and then deplane without so much as a "Whereya heading to?"

This could be the new status quo with cabs. But it's not yet, not quite, which is what makes the etiquette so nebulous.

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Michael Gebru is a talker. Parked in the cab line outside of the downtown Hyatt, he buzzes cheerfully on his hands-free device, but hangs up when a reporter knocks on his window.

"That was my wife," he explains. But most of the time if he's on the phone he's talking shop, running a used-car business out of the front seat of his sedan.

"I get calls from Georgia, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from Nationwide insurance, sometimes 10 or 12 an hour." Gebru, who has tiny spectacles and a neat mustache, gestures to a groaning briefcase and to the cup holder filled with highlighters and paper clips. "This is my small office."

But what was it like, Mr. Gebru, before cellphones, when the only people that a cabbie and a customer could talk to were . . . each other?