MOTORIST, DUMMY IN HOV-LANE ACCIDENT,

MOTORIST, DUMMY IN HOV-LANE ACCIDENT, according to this The Seattle Times article.

A woman with a full-size mannequin as a passenger drove into the car-pool lane on Interstate 405 in Renton yesterday morning, triggering a chain of collisions involving six cars and two buses, according to the State Patrol.

The buses were carrying band members from Kennedy High School in Burien. Fifteen band members and one of the drivers suffered bumps and scrapes, but there were no serious injuries.

What citations the woman will be given isn’t clear, except for driving alone in the high- occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lane.

“Her passenger wasn’t breathing, and that’s one of our requirements,” according to Monica Hunter, spokeswoman for the State Patrol.

I did a backpage “rant” for Sport Z magazine last year about how absurd commuter lanes are, and how they take a perfectly functional four-lane highway, and through misguided social engineering, turn it into a parking lot. Here is the Reader’s Digest condensed version:

Ever since I moved to San Jose in 1997, there