This isn’t an inquiry into your sex life. In New York City, it’s a legitimate question posed to women who want to get home safely on a Saturday night. Right Rides, founded in 2004, is a non-profit organization that offers free rides home to women and transgendered people on Saturday night, from the wee hours of midnight to four AM.

All a woman has to do is call the Right Rides’ number, and a dispatcher asks if she is going home (Right Rides only provides car rides from a destination to the person’s home). The dispatcher informs the caller how long she will have to wait for a car. Once the driver picks her up, she is driven home: no money, no hassle, no questions.

For any New York woman who has ever faced the dilemma of throwing down $20 for a car service, or putting herself in danger by walking home alone from the subway, bar, or party, Right Rides is a beacon of safety. Roommates Consuelo Ruybal and Oraia Reid started the service after a rise of attacks on women in the neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where many young people live, work, and party, and where Reid, a musician, has a practice studio.

When Ruybal asked Reid what she wanted to do about the increase in late night rapes, muggings, and attacks, Reid replied, “I just want to give everybody a ride home.”

Not long after the discussion, Ruybal and Reid purchased a cell phone to take dispatch calls for such a service. Distributing flyers about their free rides home for women and transfolk, they began Right Rides in the Fall of 2004, shuttling women home in the car that they owned. Over the next year of operation, Right Rides drove over 200 women home.

Since then, Zipcar, a car-sharing program, has donated a fleet of three cars for volunteers to drive on Saturday nights. Volunteers for Right Rides can sign up to be drivers or navigators, and they commit to at least one Saturday night shift per month. Their service, originally in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods of Brooklyn, now picks up callers in 45 neighborhoods in New York, from Brooklyn to Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx.

In a city where affordable housing often coincides with the sub-standard safety of the environment, Right Rides’ free service can be a welcome relief. The neighborhoods that Right Rides service are neighborhoods “with many lower-income, minority residents with limited (or a lack of) public transportation,” as reported by their website. Add to this equation the fact that women and queerfolk “typically make 5% to 15% less per year that their equally qualified male or heterosexual female counterparts”. Right Rides notes that this demographic aren’t always going to be able to shell out the cash for a cab.

All in all, Right Rides’ primary call to action is to protect women and transgendered people from late-night crime. According to a New York Times article in 2004, the year Right Rides debuted, the 90th Precinct, which covers Williamsburg, reported at least 24 rapes. In 2008, the 90th Precinct reported 10 rapes, and 432 robberies. Crime in other areas now serviced by Right Rides doesn’t paint a portrait of safety either. The 79th Precinct, which serves Bedford-Stuyvesant, reported 21 rapes, and 552 robberies in 2008. The 40th Precinct, which serves some residential neighborhoods of the South Bronx, reported 30 rapes and 541 robberies in 2008. Getting home unharmed isn’t any easier than it was when Right Rides first took action.

For Friday nights, and late-nighters of any gender, Right Rides has an additional program called Safe Walk. In warmer weather, volunteers in bright safety vests, and on bicycle, are available in groups to accompany home anybody who wants an escort. The program currently services only a few neighborhoods in Brooklyn but gives anybody who wants to get home safe another free option. Right Rides also provides information on self-defense classes, and neighborhood safety meetings, to foster discussion about making communities safe.

Tiara Jewell, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident, has used Right Rides’ service to get home, and also was one of their first volunteers. Speaking of what it was like to get home late before Right Rides was founded, she said, “I had become fearful of getting home alone [safely]. Even though I knew basic self defense and would be as on alert as possible, there were still times I needed to get home alone, tipsy, or late at night. Like a lot of New Yorkers, I’ve been mugged. I’d had a taxi driver try to kiss me once. Just awful experiences you hope will never happen again or to anyone that you know. Having a safe way home for me and my friends is really important.”

Volunteering for Right Rides, Jewell helped with several of the non-profit’s promotions of safety. “Really quickly, the operation came together,” she said, of Right Rides’ beginning. “We were serving women and genderqueer people in North Brooklyn [with] free car rides home, escorting people on foot, and I helped organize a free self defense workshop with the Center for Anti-Violence Education. It is a great example of people coming together without hesitation to support their community.”

If this sounds like a program that your community needs, Right Rides offers information and guidelines for opening your own chapter, including identifying your community’s need for such programming, and how to network with like-minded resources near you.

A map of serviced neighborhoods in NYC is available on their website, in addition to information on how to volunteer or donate. And if you’re a woman in NYC, it’s a good idea to put Right Rides’ number in your cell: (718) 964-7781. Because, as their motto says, getting home safe shouldn’t be a luxury.