I heard last night and read this morning that a judge has ruled that unborn babies don't count for carpools, and despite my ardent pro-life stance my reaction is "duh!".
Unborn children don't count when it comes to carpool lanes, according to a judge's ruling.Even after being fined $367 for improper use of a High Occupancy Vehicle lane, Ahwatukee Foothills resident Candace Dickinson stood by her contention that Arizona traffic laws don't define what a person is, so the child inside her womb justified her use of the lane. ...
The case set off a firestorm of opinion but Phoenix Municipal Court Judge Dennis Freeman used a "common sense" definition in which an individual occupies a "separate and distinct" space in a vehicle.
"The law is meant to fill empty space in a vehicle," Freeman said.
I think carpool lanes are a dumb idea in general, but if they're going to make any sense at all they should set a quota for licensed drivers, not just for people filling otherwise empty space. If a mom drives her five minor kids around she shouldn't get to use the carpool lane, because those five kids can't drive and wouldn't otherwise be in other vehicles.
There is the case where a single driver picks up other peoples' kids and ferries them all to soccer practice or whatnot, and in those cases you can argue that the carpool keeps the parents of the other kids off the road. Ok, so make the parents who aren't driving give their drivers licenses to their kids for the duration, thereby ensuring that the number of cars being driven is actually reduced.
Right, but licensed drivers - or even drivers old enough that they could be licensed - has never been the rule. Only "person" is. Better still, as I noted in one of my oldest blog entries, Section 470 of the California Vehicle Code defines the word "person" to include corporations. Don't know if the same is true of Arizona, though.
legally I find it interesting, as does Xrlq, that if a fetus is killed along with the mother you can be charged separately for the death of the fetus (as if you killed 2 people) but if the same mother and fetus were riding in the carpool lane at the moment of their deaths, Mom could be ticketed.... Hmmmm....
Michael - I agree in concept that it would make mroe sense to require that it be 2 licensed drivers, but I think that presents significant enforcement difficulties. A passing CHP officer can tell at a glance if someone is in the carpool lane by themselves or with other people; with the proposed licensed-drivers standard, he'd have to stop and check them. The same, of course, holds for single pregnant women.
Here are a few other interesting questions about carpool lanes.
* In many other place, like N. California, there are no barriers to enter or exit the carpool lane. This eliminates the traffic jams at the exit locations. Why do they have this concept in S. Cal? To punish us?
On the most sophisticated freeway in the US, the 105, there is one stretch where there is no exit lane for about 4 miles. Makes no sense at all.
* Why are carpool lanes designated as such 24/7? Is anyone carpooling at 10:00 on Saturday night? But if there is an accident, having the carpool lane available would potentially help free traffic.
Carpool lanes should only be such during rush hour. It makes no logical sense to incentivise the use of the lane any other time.
It makes no sense to have carpool lanes at any time.