Anyone who has ever sat in bumper-to-bumper Southern California traffic knows the temptation of the high-occupancy vehicle lane. While the carpool lane promises a smooth, breezy commute, it comes with a strict passenger requirement. Of course, that hasn’t stopped solo drivers from dreaming up wildly creative ways to cheat the system.
Over the years, the California Highway Patrol has busted drivers using everything from stolen safety dummies to a mannequin rocking a baseball cap in Glendora. Up in the Bay Area, one commuter even went as far as drawing a mustache on a dummy’s face to make it look more realistic.
However, compared to those arts-and-crafts masterminds, the decoy recently discovered by officers on the 10 Freeway in West Covina was just downright lazy.
A Fishy Looking Passenger
The incident went down when a solo driver tried to blast through the HOV lane during peak traffic hours. According to Marissa McIntire of the CHP’s Southern Division, who spoke to the Los Angeles Times, “The officer was on patrol on his motor and saw the vehicle in the HOV lane and passed the driver.”
At first glance, the car appeared to have someone riding shotgun. But as the motorcycle officer cruised past, something didn’t quite add up.
“The officer observed the vehicle again and thought it was fishy,” McIntire told the news outlet.
Trusting his gut, the officer pulled the suspicious vehicle over to get a closer look at the mysterious passenger. When he walked up to the window, he didn’t find a sophisticated mannequin or a life-size doll. Instead, the driver had simply wrapped a jacket around the front passenger seat’s headrest and fastened the seatbelt across it to create the vague illusion of a human torso.
The CHP’s Baldwin Park office later roasted the unnamed driver in a social media post. “Nice try — but jackets don’t count toward Carpool Lane requirements.”
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An Expensive Shortcut
Getting caught with a fake co-pilot is an embarrassing ordeal, but it also carries a massive financial penalty. The driver was officially cited for violating the carpool lane restrictions, a ticket that regularly costs California motorists upwards of $400 to nearly $500 once court fees and state assessments are tacked on.
With hybrid and clean-air vehicle HOV exemptions recently expiring across the state, the carpool lanes are more heavily monitored than ever before. To wrap up their warning to ambitious commuters, CHP officials gave a very blunt statement: “Fictitious friends and mannequin copilots won’t cut it.”
