Vinay Menon: How the Grinch stole my faith in honest drivers

There is no carpool lane in Whoville.

Tell that to the Arizona driver who was pulled over with, to quote law enforcement, a “Seusspicious-looking ‘passenger.’” The state’s Department of Public Safety tweeted a photo and incident blurb this week: “The trooper stopped the driver & determined the grumpy green guy was, in fact, an inflatable Grinch.”

The driver was not identified. So I have no way of reaching out to this Cindy Lou Who to ask if they were smoking crack before hatching this hare-brained scheme. Why on Mount Crumpit would you try to infiltrate an HOV lane with an inanimate object guaranteed to draw even more attention to your vehicle?

It’s like shoplifting in the nude.

People, I’m almost legally blind. But if I was standing on the side of that road without my glasses and this red sedan whipped past, with Grinch waving and flashing that devious line-smile, even I could have made a citizen’s arrest.

When HOV lanes first rolled out across the continent, the biggest violation was non-compliance. Some drivers just brazenly ignored the two-or-more signs.

Then came the era of “creative deception.”

Desperate to shave a few minutes off their commutes, some motorists turned to dolls. In 2015, a driver, possibly fleeing a Toys “R” Us, was nailed on Highway 404. When the officer peered at the passenger, he found a puppet in lipstick, sunglasses and fancy scarf. As the OPP tweeted at the time: “This doll will not provide much conversation and does not qualify you to drive in the HOV lane!!”

Around this time, I can only assume department stores were holding emergency loss prevention meetings to solve The Case of the Vanishing Mannequins.

Instead of sporting the hottest fashions, these spooky and lifeless models were kidnapped and given a new gig as they were buckled into bucket seats and topped with wide-brim hats to serve as unwitting accomplices in HOV crimes.

Now, I don’t know if the RCMP quietly foiled the mannequin trafficking rings. Or if inflation has since motivated speeding scofflaws to hit up the Dollar Store in search of XXL balloon animals or an inflatable Grinch.

But the carpool decoys just keep getting weirder and weirder.

Earlier this year, a man was stopped by Washington State Patrol. officers who were unable to interrogate his passenger. As it turns out, a skeleton in a neon hoodie can’t sing like a canary. Incredibly, according to a Dow Jones Factiva search, there are more than 80 media stories involving HOV skeleton stowaways.

And it’s not just the plastic bones of the dead. Other drivers have been caught trying to pass off plush dinosaurs as spouses or sex dolls as coworkers. One driver was ticketed for travelling with a blow-up dude in spectacles and a hooded jean jacket. The criminal mastermind behind the wheel even coloured in the face. Alas, with access to only three Crayolas, his commuter buddy looked like a startled, cross-eyed lumberjack with head trauma and a bad case of jaundice.

But at least it was vaguely humanoid. Which is more than I can say about the fellow in Long Island who tried to deceive traffic patrol by constructing a Popsicle stick man and zipping it into polar fleece: “Sir, can I see your licence and registration? Also, why does your wooden brother have no eyes and mouth?”

Then there was the guy who couldn’t even bother making something. He just nestled a blue baseball hat on the passenger headrest and prayed for the best.

These silly HOV tales are amusing. But they are also aggravating. As the rest of us follow the rules and idle in bumper-to-bumper traffic, it’s beyond annoying to see an SUV redline in the carpool lane with an insouciant Chewbacca riding shotgun.

In this province, if you are caught improperly using the HOV lanes, you could be hit with a $100 fine and lose three demerit points. Is that a strong enough deterrent? Or at this very second, is someone building a life-sized Harry and Meghan out of Lego to shove in the back seat before their next drive to Niagara Falls?

What is going on? No idea. But I suspect these crash-test dummy capers might be wired to the social drivetrain as we keep slipping into reverse because too many of our compatriots are keen to play an angle and get away with something.

You can see it at tax time. You can see it in the Express Lane at the grocery store. You can see it in lazy colleagues who bring nothing to the table and distant relatives forever soliciting favours. You can see it in the fraud around COVID government payments and in the delusional eyes of mannequin Kari Lake.

Me, me, me. What can I get away with today? Me, me, me.

Boost fines? Amplify enforcement? Deploy cameras and AI? Ban dolls?

Or do we just accept HOV lane cheats are a symptom, not the disease?

On and off the road, it’s the real-life Grinches that are making us sick.

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