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.
By Jessie Schiewe
(Photo: Dumphasizer / Flickr)
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.
Today, the state with the highest number of HOV lanes is California, followed by Minnesota, Washington, Texas, and Virginia.
Even in the early days of carpool lanes, people tried to scam the system.
Twice on the same day in 1995, police in Boston caught two different drivers using this tactic. According to The Boston Globe, one used a Halloween mask “with red hair, a black eye, and grisley scars, similar to the character from Child’s Play,” taped to the top of a stepladder wrapped in a sweatshirt to fake their passenger; the other plunked a football on top of a 5-gallon bucked “and slapped on an Elmer Fudd-style winter hat with ear flaps.”
A year before that, a Long Island woman was caught driving in the HOV lane using a pacifier-sucking baby doll strapped in a car seat.
(In fact, Long Island residents have a storied history of trying to fool the law when it comes to using HOV lanes. There are entire articles dedicated to the region’s best offenders, who have tried using everything from CPR dummies to piles of personal belongings to make it look like they have second passengers.)
“The Many Uses of Outdoor Mannequins”
Clearly, HOV lane drivers vary in their levels of commitment to the art of faking passengers. Some abide by the “two is better than one” rule and have tried chauffeuring multiple mannequins in their backseats. Others have been lazier, using only the top halves of dummies (the torso + head) or, lazier yet, a briefcase stacked with folded clothing.
In Washington state, it’s reportedly common for cops to spot stuffed sleeping bags and duffel bags riding shotgun, although stranger things have been seen both there and elsewhere in the country. A Chucky doll was once used, as well as a life-size alien doll.
And then there are the drivers who think that paper cut-outs of famous people might be convincing enough. Usually, in these cases, it’s not the two-dimensionality of the passenger that tips off cops, but the sheer unlikeliness that Donald Trump or Jonathan Goldsmith, the Dos Equis beer mascot known as “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” would be in the car in the first place.
In a more recent case from this January, an Arizona man tried to cheat the system by plopping a plastic skeleton in his front seat. To make it more convincing, the driver added a camouflage fishing hat to the horror prop and placed a red cooler on its lap.
On very rare occasions, people aren’t aware that their so-called “extra passenger(s)” don’t count for the HOV lane. This usually happens with pets, when drivers mistakenly assume that the addition of their fur baby allows them to drive in the carpool lane. (It does not.)
It’s even happened with dead bodies.
In July of 2019, a hearse driver in Nevada was pulled over for cruising in the HOV lane, despite carrying a coffin containing a corpse in the backseat.
“He doesn’t count?” the man reportedly asked. (Nope.)
The fact that we know about so many of these HOV lane dummies means that the drivers clearly didn’t get away with their crimes.
But there are likely just as many, if not more, who have used the tactic with success. Once caught, drivers sometimes confess to having relied on the ploy anywhere from five months to two years before cops figured it out.
With so many miles of HOV lanes to patrol, not to mention the thousands of drivers careening down them every hour, identifying dummies in HOV lanes can be challenging.
But there are a few telltale signs that can tip off police, like weird bodily positions, strange (or recognizable) facial features, and overall immobility of a passenger.
There are also times of days when dummies or mannequins in the HOV lane are most likely to be spotted. Drivers tend to use fake passengers to skirt traffic, so rush hours — namely around 8 a.m. or 5 p.m. — are prime times for cops to be on the lookout.
Those who get caught cheating with an HOV lane dummy are slapped with a ticket and a fine, though the amount they must pay varies depending on what state they’re caught in. In California, it can cost as much as $500, with the national average estimated to be around $400, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In recent years, social media mockery has also come into play as an additional form of punishment for those who break the law using this tactic. Both police departments and highway patrol agencies have taken to Twitter and Facebook to ridicule drivers for their creative or slapdash get-ups, and to warn others against trying the same ruse.
The tricky part is that there are no high-tech systems for catching these HOV lane violators, meaning that troopers have only their eyes to rely on for spotting them. Because of this, some states, like New York, Florida, and California, have created dedicated police units whose one and only purpose is to patrol highways looking for dummies being used in HOV lanes.
But, the police are smart. They might not catch every offender — and, in fact, they don’t — but they’ve certainly learned a thing or two from them. Namely, that they can also use this tactic to their advantage.
Just as a mannequin with a wig can seem like a convincing passenger when racing past you at 80 miles an hour, so too can a mannequin in a police uniform holding a speed gun cause you to slow down.
JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN MERMAIDS AND THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.
