Don’t yell at me… I checked at Snopes and elsewhere. I’m stumped.
I have been propogating the following story for some years now… I heard it as “fact” but can’t remember where. Can anyone help me out?
The story goes:
A pregnant woman in California received a ticket for riding alone in the HOV Lane(“High Occupancy Vehicle” - commonly known as the "Carpool Lane). It seems the law requires two or more passengers to use that lane.
She went to court and beat the ticket using the argument that, since the unborn fetus she carried was viable outside the womb, it was, by abortion law, a person and thus counted as a second passenger.
I remember a quick news quip a little while after that where a Hearse driver tried the same thing, counting the corpse in the back as a passenger. The officer laughed, but still gave him the ticket, and when he argued it before a judge he was told that the other passenger had to be a living seperate person. More balls than brains in that guy.
One can assume that if your passenger died while in the carpool lane you would be allowed to take the time to make a safe exit, but even that isn’t certain until someone is ticketed for it and makes a challenge. Kind of unlikely to see it anytime soon, I hope.
There is enough about this story that does not look or smell kosher that makes me judge it as an Urban Legend on the spot. If I’m wrong, I will perform a 123rd trimester abortion on MYSELF!
Since ‘commisioners’ are given wide leeway, it very well could have happened, but it does not matter. Unless it went to the Appeals Court it is not citable. Yes, the CHP does say that is no excuse, but that does not mean some Commissioner did not buy it, once. I would guess it has been tried lots of times, and maybe worked once.
