Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/26/pillow-wearing-a-baseball-cap.html
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Pillows wearing vests and baseball caps while holding briefcases on their laps are people too!
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Looks like something out of one of those rapture movies…
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Amateur. It was probably the lack of seatbelt that initially caught the cop’s eye.
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Don’t you need three people in a vehicle for carpool lanes?
See, she would have got away with it if she’d used a dakimakura.
#notallpillows
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I think it varies. Where I live it’s only two even though that hardly qualifies as “high occupancy” in my book, unless you’re driving a Mini Cooper. In one of those two is a crowd.
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"the woman was also ticketed for driving an unregistered and uninspected vehicle."
Shouldn’t she have been trying harder to avoid attention?
Somewhere I read about someone bearing the articles of declaration for some corporation in the passenger seat (insofar as corporations are people). I don’t think that worked either.
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So I hear a lot about the pillow in the passenger seat, any word if the four eight year olds crammed in the trunk count as valid passengers?
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It definitely varies. Here in WA state we have 2 person and 3 person differences. Motorcycles can also use them here as well.
Now the moral question to ask is… is a pregnant woman traveling by herself eligible for the car pool lane?
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#CapsWearingPillowsWithBriefcasesMatter
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California, too! 
In SoCal, it’s two or more 24/7. I think the Bay Area has three or more but with time restrictions?
ETA: Pregnant woman is considered one, infant in car seat is two.
You would think that but I have actually seen people debate the other answer to that. I’ve even debated that children should also be exempt from carpool lanes. They can’t drive themselves so the incentive to share a ride and not take a solo trip can’t apply to them. But seeing as the cops up here don’t seem to give a crap about carpool violations I have given up caring. (I will admit to slow down vigilantism if I see a solo driver behind me in the carpool lane. Such schadenfreude to see them fuming at me in the rear view mirror)
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To my knowledge it hasn’t been litigated here, but I think they would ticket a pregnant woman. (I totally agree with your take with children not counting. The spirit of the word carpool implies getting licensed drivers to share one vehicle in order to reduce traffic. Unfortunately our signage says two or more persons, not licensed drivers. 
)
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My kids are picked up for camp in a vanpool. If they weren’t, each kid would have to be driven there by a parent in a car.
It’s often too much trouble to differentiate between kids being lugged along as cargo by their parents, and kids being lugged along in a group conveyance instead of being lugged along individually by their parents. There’s no need to require cops to try and make that differentiation. Too much thinking for them. Just let 'em count skulls and be done with it.
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And this is the problem with trying to parse what carpool means. I would whole-heartedly agree that shuttling kids from different familles with one minivan or SUV definitely meets the spirit of the carpool. The raison d’être is to relieve congestion. Sorry that I wasn’t clearer.
(And there is no reason for the CHP to count heads as one child = one person.)
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Well, that was my point in counting kids as people, even though they don’t drive. In L.A. at least most of the carpool lanes seem to be filled with hybrid Priuses with their little exemption stickers (and single occupants) rather than cars hauling kids.
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Amateur indeed. When my teddy bear was my ride-along, he not only wore a seatbelt, but a proper hat and a bolo tie. And a rakish grin.
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She should have explained that she was driving her husband to prison and he escaped.
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