Date: January 30, 1996

 	Bill Hundley climbs aboard the red Ford van most every workday
 just before it leaves the District for home at 4:35 p.m. As he and his
 fellow commuters bounce southward over the 14th Street bridge, he chats
 with the group about their day.
       But he knows he has to make conversation fast because the clock is
 ticking. In five minutes, the van will pass the Pentagon, and his air
 time will be up.
      Call it the Pentagon rule: All van-pool gabbing must stop at that
 landmark, so people can sleep.
      "I get on at the Commerce Department, so my window when I can talk
 is very small," said Hundley, a Dale City resident. "I have to make my
 points quick."
        Each day, more than half a million people ride to work in the
 Washington area in car and van pools -- making it the leading U.S.
 metropolitan area for ride-sharing. But getting people to ride in close
 quarters with relative strangers for hours is one thing. Making sure
 they get along and don't drive each other crazy is another.
         Those who ride the high occupancy vehicle lanes describe their
 vehicles as mini-societies. Each has explicit or implicitly understood
 rules for maintaining harmony. Some car pools are democracies, but most
 are ruled by enlightened despots (the driver). There are coups (the
 whole group jumping to another van). And those who break codes of the
 vehicle can be banished.
          Hundley's van pool has a fairly extensive set of informal
 rules. When the van leaves in the morning at 6:15, no one talks once
 they hit Interstate 95, so people can read or sleep. The radio always is
 off on the way to work. It's usually on in the afternoon but tuned to
 some bland station with music that no one really likes but that doesn't
 offend anyone.
         The consensus on board, according to Hundley, is to talk -- when
 they're supposed to talk -- only about superficial things. The group
 avoids political discussions. Instead, chitchat often revolves around
 weather and pets. And despite riding in the same van pool for 15 years,
 Hundley doesn't know the last names of most of his fellow riders.
        "If you ask me about Rhonda," said Hundley about one of the
 people he shares van space with, "I'd say I don't know her last name. I
 know she's young. She's blond. She works at Agriculture and gets off at
 Independence."
        Katryna Hayden laid out explicit rules for her car. Last
 semester, the 24-year-old University of Maryland graduate student was
 commuting with two others from Charles County to College Park.
        In bumper-to-bumper traffic last September, her two car-mates
 began arguing over politics, abortion and the death penalty. That's when
 Hayden imposed the "no politics or religion" rule on conversation.
         "It became very uncomfortable," said Hayden, who instead steered
 conversation to social lives and pets. "If we were going to be able to
 do this car pool, I told them we have to keep the conversation topics to
 other things . . . and not talk about issues where there were no
 answers."
       Music and talk radio are universal sources of potential commuter
 discord, and the rules for those areas can get thick.
       Hayden's car pool, for example, devised a schedule. On Friday
 afternoons and Monday mornings, she listened to her country-western
 tapes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, one rider tuned in AM talk radio. On
 Monday afternoons, plus Wednesday and Friday mornings, the other rider
 listened to a mellow rock station.
      In the unwritten book of car-pool etiquette, "slugs" get their own
 chapter, and it isn't exactly a Bill of Rights. Slugs are commuters who
 wait in lines every morning in Northern Virginia, and evenings in the
 District, until commuters who want to use the HOV lanes on Interstates
 95 and 395 pick them up. Each day, these riders get into a different car
 that happens to be going their way -- joining established car pools that
 have a vacancy that day, or forming spontaneous ones.
      According to Jeff Holzhausen, who's picked up slugs before heading
 north on I-95 to Arlington, they have few rights. "Slugs are not allowed
 to speak unless spoken to because they're outsiders," said Holzhausen, a
 38-year-old Army major. "They're there for a free ride. They can't make
 any demand to turn the heat up or music down. They're in no position to
 demand."
      Indeed, Heather McQuigg, 25, said it isn't easy being a slug. She's
 had to sit in freezing cars in the winter and sweltering ones in the
 summer. She's endured religious sermons at high volume as well as
 mini-rap concerts.
       "Generally the cars are clean, but I've ridden in some that were
 gross," she adds. "There were food particles, dog hair. There were a
 couple cars so utterly disgusting, I wanted to put a blanket on the seat
 before I sat down. What are you going to say? You're a pig'? You can't
 say anything."
        While formal and informal rules go a long way toward keeping the
 peace, conflicts still arise that are hard to ignore in such close
 quarters, even by people bent on harmonious commuting.
      Among the most consistent complaints: odor.
       Numerous poolers have had problems with women wearing strong
 perfumes that drive tears to the eyes and cause allergies to ignite.
 Twice in the last year, Teresia Kay, 42, had to go to the hospital
 because of asthma attacks set off by an overbearing scent in her van
 pool, which runs from Woodbridge to Massachusetts Avenue NW. Even so, a
 woman in the van ignored her pleas to tone down her perfume. After
 getting out of the hospital, the best she could do was persuade the
 driver to let her sit behind him with the window slightly open.
           Kay, like other riders, also has had to endure fellow riders
 with dirty clothes or offensive body odor.
         "In that kind of environment, it really becomes noticeable," she
 reflects. She remembers one in particular. "He was filthy dirty. You sat
 as far away as possible."
       King von Schilling, a Lake Ridge van-pool driver since 1980, once
 had to kick a passenger out of his van pool because he smelled. Riders
 were threatening to jump ship if von Schilling didn't do something. So
 he had to tell a big, burly passenger that he'd have to find a new van
 and should consider bathing more often. The passenger, von Schilling
 said, told him that his bathing habits weren't any of von Schilling's
 business. "You're right," von Schilling said he responded. "But the
 comfort of my riders is my business, so goodbye."
       Then there are the chronic talkers. With van pools leaving the
 outer suburbs before 6 a.m., talking often is frowned on so people can
 get some extra snoozing time. But in Howard Carter's van, which runs
 from Prince William County to the District, one woman became a legend a
 few years ago. There seemed to be no topic she wouldn't visit: religion,
 politics, her kids, anything. It drove people nuts.
        When someone told her to be quiet, Carter said, the woman shot
 back: "If you want to sleep, stay at home and sleep."
       Carter, 61 and now retired, installed two rear speakers in an
 attempt to drown her out. It didn't work. Riders would leave the pool,
 telling him they couldn't take the talking anymore.
      Besides odors and noise, drivers report having to expel riders for
 other violations of a car's karma. Barry Sherry said that a couple of
 years ago, two riders on his van started arguing on the way to work
 after one thought the other made an offensive racial comment.
        That evening, the two continued bickering on the way back to Dale
 City. Finally, Sherry had to pull the van over when the yelling got out
 of control. He ended up kicking both out of the pool.
        Sherry said word travels fast about habitual offenders who bounce
 from one van pool to another.
         "If someone calls and says, I'm in another van pool, but I'm
 unhappy,' it sends up a red flag," Sherry said. "If they've been in 10
 vans in 10 years, maybe it's a problem with them."
 Bill Hundley's Dale City car pool, like most others, has rules
 of behavior: Conversation is limited to nonpolitical topics such as
 weather and pets.
 Jennifer Garner, left, sleeps while Betty Hasek sits quietly
 during a morning van-pool ride from Dale City to the District. Many car
 pools impose silence.
 Jeanette Kelley, right, and Kim Sears try to sleep while their
 van pool makes its way from Dale City to the District.

 Copyright 1996   The Washington Post
 Accesion Number:  701158