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Faking Passengers To Use The Carpool / HOV Lane(s)

L

Leaferne

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Feb 7, 2004
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This seems an odd sort of thing to have on one's record:

Mom had `decoy' child in carpool lane
Mar. 23, 2006. 01:00 AM
BOB MITCHELL
STAFF REPORTER

A 39-year-old Aurora woman has become the first person in Ontario to be caught using a decoy in her vehicle so she could drive in a carpool lane.

Instead of finding a child in a car seat during yesterday morning's rush hour, an Ontario Provincial Police officer patrolling the high-occupancy vehicle lane on Highway 404 discovered a stuffed winter coat.

"It looked like Kenny from South Park was strapped in the child seat," OPP Sgt. Cam Woolley said.

More than one person must be in a vehicle in order to use the specially designated lanes. Police have issued hundreds of tickets to violators since HOV lanes opened on Highway 404 and Highway 403 in December. About 1,000 vehicles a day have been using the carpool lanes during rush hour, police said.

"We've been averaging a couple of hundred tickets each month and some of them are real rocket scientists," Woolley said. "We've caught people driving with no insurance, no licence and on criminal warrants.

"But we actually thought we'd wind up getting a lot of people using mannequins like they have done in California and other places.... This is the first person who has been really creative at cheating just so they could use the HOV lanes."

Woolley said the driver, whose name has not been released, admitted to the patrol officer that she had pulled the stunt many times in the past. "She told the officer that the fake baby routine usually worked," he said.
The officer initially spotted the motorist heading south on the 404 near Sheppard Ave. at about 9 a.m.

"He noticed (the car) seemed to be driving too slowly, so he pulled up beside her," Woolley said. "Had she been going faster, he probably wouldn't have stopped her, but he just thought something didn't look right.

"He really thought at first it was a real kid sitting in the child seat in the right rear of the car. He pulled up beside her and drove for a long period. Even when he stopped her, the officer still wasn't 100 per cent certain there wasn't a real kid in the car seat."

Woolley said the woman had stuffed a hooded winter coat with an unknown material and pulled the hood down so the face wouldn't have been visible.

"His arms were stretched out, but there weren't any hands," Woolley said. "Looked like a scarecrow ... and that Kenny character from the South Park cartoon series. He was almost fooled."

Police said the woman, who was on her way to work in downtown Toronto, was charged under the Highway Traffic Act with improper use of an HOV lane. If convicted, she faces a fine of $110 and a penalty of three demerit points.

With files from Matthew Kwong
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Source
 
Were those male dummies that women drivers were supposed to carry with them in the passenger seat for protection a real thing or just some harebrained scheme that never got off the drawing board? Maybe this guy was just scared about being in the car on his own? Say that to the police, Mr Law-Circumventer.
 
OneWingedBird said:
Careful... you'll have James in here with The Great Pantyhose Craft Book!
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As a matter of fact, I had forgotten those. Recently I have been driving around with the head of F. W. Murnau on a stick.

Copper: Excuse me for asking, but isn't that the head of famous film director F. W. Murnau?
Whitehood: It's to prevent me being raped.
Copper: I would do something about the flies, if I were you.
Whitehood: And take my eye off the road like he did? :eek:
 
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A bone of contention.

A driver in the US has been caught trying to disguise a fake skeleton as a passenger so he could use a high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety said the 62-year-old was pulled over when an official noticed the skeleton, which was wearing a hat and tied to the passenger seat with yellow rope. The driver was given a penalty ticket. The department told AP news agency some 7,000 drivers in Arizona were caught violating HOV rules every year. In a post on Twitter, it warned others against trying the same tactics.

"Think you can use the HOV lane with Skeletor riding shotgun? You're dead wrong!" it wrote, referring to the fictional nemesis of He-Man in the Masters of the Universe series.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51250346
 
I'm not sure who this driver though he / she was fooling ...
Driver caught using carpool lanes with stuffed dinosaur passenger

A Washington state driver is facing a hefty fine after being caught using a highway carpool lane with a giant stuffed dinosaur as their only passenger.

Trooper Rick Johnson of the Washington State Patrol said a driver was pulled over Wednesday for speeding in the high-occupancy vehicle lanes of Interstate 5 northbound.

The trooper conducting the traffic stop quickly discovered the driver's only passenger was a big green stuffed dinosaur toy.

"Even if you have a favorite stuffed animal it doesn't count as a passenger for the HOV," Johnson wrote.

The driver could be facing a hefty fine thanks to a law that took effect last summer that adds a $200 fine to the $186 base fine for a HOV violation if a driver is caught "using a dummy, doll, or other human facsimile to make it appear that an additional person is in the vehicle."
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SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/0...ith-stuffed-dinosaur-passenger/4761581531010/
 
This webpage provides a summary of HOV passenger faking and provides some selected examples (some with photos) ...
Getting Caught Using a Dummy in the HOV Lane

From skeletons to stuffed sleeping bags, fake passengers aren’t hard to erect, but cops are not always so easily fooled.

Oops, someone did it again. That is, they drove in the high-occupancy vehicle lane (aka the HOV lane or carpool lane) with a fake passenger sitting in their seat.

It’s a classic, not to mention illegal move committed by solo drivers seeking to skirt traffic and shorten their commute times. Most HOV lanes require a minimum of two people in a car, so what’s a driver in a rush to do when they’re the only one in the vehicle? Create a fake passenger, duh. ...

The dummy tactic has been employed by drivers since at least the mid-1990s. Though the first HOV lane was created in Washington, D.C., in 1969, carpool lanes didn’t see major growth until the end of the 20th century, when air quality control became a top concern that also came with the promise of extra funding to construct the lanes. ...

Even in the early days of carpool lanes, people tried to scam the system. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.okwhatever.org/topics/selfie/hov-lane-dummy
 
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This driver had a notably good fake passenger mannequin that almost fooled a highway patrol officer.
FakePassenger-CA-2102.jpg
Fake passenger almost fools California Highway Patrol

California Highway Patrol officers in Los Angeles County were so impressed with a dummy in a passenger seat they posted it on Facebook. ...

It was so realistic; it even had sunglasses in its shirt pocket and work boots on.

The driver wasn't talking much, so they don't know where it came from. ...

The driver told the officer he had been driving with it for over a year. ...

An HOV lane violation ticket is a minimum $490 fine.
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SOURCE: https://local21news.com/news/offbeat/fake-passenger-almost-fools-california-highway-patrol
 
This wasn't the most sophisticated attempt at a dummy passenger.

drama-mask-rider.jpg
US driver caught driving in carpool lane with fake passenger

A Long Island man was pulled over and given a summons for allegedly driving in the Long Island Expressway lane with a fake passenger on Wednesday night, police said.

Police said Justin Kunis, 20, attached a white drama mask to the front passenger headrest of his Nissan sedan in a bid to make it appear as if somebody else was in the car with him. ...

Kunis, of Lake Grow, was issued a summons for an occupancy violation.

The high-occupancy vehicle lanes Kunis was caught driving in (also known as an HOV lane or carpool lane) on the Expressway are reserved for cars with two or more passengers ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.news.com.au/world/north...r/news-story/f052ab34d41826845c768786a46483ed
 
A Texas man received a citation for using a Halloween skeleton as a faux passenger.
TX-HOVLane-SkeletonPassenger.jpg
Texas driver cited for using carpool lanes with skeleton passenger

Authorities in Texas said a driver using a high-occupancy vehicle lane was ticketed when deputies noticed the only passenger was a Halloween skeleton.

The Harris County Pct. 5 Constable's Office said in a Facebook post that a driver was pulled over by deputies who noticed the driver was the only human being in the vehicle ...

The passenger seat of the vehicle was occupied by a skeleton Halloween decoration wearing a hat.

"Our deputies saw right through the ruse and issued the driver a bone-afide citation," the post said. "After a sternum lecture, deputies wished him bone voyage!"
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FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/0...as-HOV-lane-skeleton-passenger/4391633030990/
 
We had a thread on this years ago to which I contributed with quotes from papers on 'slugging', or casual carpooling.

I'd first come across it in a study of slugging as a process of reciprocation between strangers, informal but with strict rules.*
The subject area had been the Pentagon where commuters queue up to accept lifts from drivers so they can all travel in the carpool lanes.

Here's a really nice NYT article on it -
(Safe NYT link)
To Commute to Capital, Early Bird Gets 'Slugs'

Slugging started by spontaneous eruption and runs by perpetual motion.

When the area's three-person, high-occupancy vehicle lanes opened 30 years ago, some guy and then another and another picked up commuters at bus stops to get the passengers needed to use the lanes.

No government agency sanctions slugging, runs it, regulates it, promotes it or thought it up.

The Census Bureau, which tracks most forms of commuting, knows nothing about slugging.
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So if drivers can't reliably pick up trustworthy passengers to allow them to use the carpool lane they might resort to desperate measures.

*I was looking at slugging as an example of the sociological concept of weak ties. In social network theory individuals need a mixture of various strengths of 'ties' to others in order to function well in life. Slugging fits the weak ties bill perfectly.
 
One might say using a plastic skeleton wearing a hoodie to fake your way onto the HOV lane was dumb. Using a brightly colored high-viz hoodie was even dumber.

HOVFakeSkeleton-2202.jpg
Washington driver caught using plastic skeleton passenger in carpool lanes

The Washington State Patrol said a driver using the high-occupancy vehicle lanes on a highway was stopped when a trooper realized the driver's only passenger was a plastic skeleton wearing a hoodie.

Trooper Rick Johnson, a WSP public information officer, said on Twitter that a trooper spotted the vehicle with the faux-passenger traveling in the HOV lanes of southbound Interstate 405 in the Coal Creek area. ...

Johnson shared a photo showing the passenger bucked into the front seat of the vehicle was a plastic skeleton disguised with a hooded sweatshirt. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2022/0...senger-Washington-State-Patrol/4171644958314/
 
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