During the morning commute, many solo drivers sit in traffic, watching cars with two or more passengers go flying past them in the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane. Thursday morning, a man decided to put a dummy in his passenger seat—an actual dummy, not a human with a low IQ—to slide by traffic on Interstate 93 in Charlestown, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts State Police are no dummies themselves, though, and figured out the deception quickly.
As the State Police posted on Facebook, Trooper Todd Glidden was monitoring traffic on I-93 and noticed a passenger that “just didn’t seem right.” Glidden attempted to pull over the vehicle, but the driver refused to stop. At the end of the HOV lane, Trooper Kevin O’Brien attempted to stop the car himself, but the driver again refused. Trooper Glidden eventually managed to track down and stop the car. When he did, he found a well-dressed dummy in the passenger seat rather than a human.
According to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, “Carpools, vanpools, buses, motorcycles, and taxis with two or more occupants are eligible to use the HOV lane.” Though MassDOT does not specify that an occupant must be human to qualify for the HOV lane, a living, breathing passenger seems to be implied.
The driver, identified only as a 44-year-old man from Reading, Massachusetts, was cited for the HOV violation and failure to stop for a police officer. As far as I am aware, the Massachusetts General Laws specify no violations for making bad life choices like this guy did.