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http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2011/06/09/18258906.html

Man allegedly car-pooled with blow-up doll

TORONTO - Maybe his passenger was trying to say, "Oh-oh, this is a bad idea" - but that didn't stop a 51-year-old Burlington, Ont., man from allegedly using an inflatable doll to try sneak into the QEW's high-occupancy lanes.


OPP officers pulled over the driver around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday and found he was accompanied by a blow-up doll dressed to look like a female passenger.

"It was the cliche inflatable doll - the type you see in a certain type of movie, if you know what I mean," said Const. Graham Williamson. "The doll's mouth was in an 'O' shape and it was dressed in a baseball cap and jacket."

A tipster alerted police, claiming to see the driver in the highway's HOV lanes in Burlington. Police located the black SUV going east near Dorval Dr. in Oakville, Ont.

"The doll was strapped in with a seatbelt, so its safety was considered," Williamson said, adding such incidents are rare.

"But I can't help but to wonder if more people are trying and getting away with it. ... It's not a wise idea. HOV lanes are there for a reason - they encourage car-pooling."
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The driver was charged with two offences related to the improper use of HOV lanes, each with a $110 penalty.

The doll was confiscated and held as evidence. The jacket and hat were returned to the driver.
 
To be fair, when I was in living in L.A. this was "kind of" an acceptable thing to do.

(I say kind of because I'm not sure if that would ever be considered completely acceptable)

A few of the guys I worked with even used to grab dummies from the studio and stick them in the front seat.

Considering it would take me over an hour each way to drive to work when Google maps says it should be 8 minutes, I can see why people would go for it.
 
From wiki:

"When HOV lanes were first introduced in California in the 1970s, some drivers placed an inflatable person in the passenger seat in an attempt to fool regulators. This was soon outlawed, but the practice persists.

And now there's Cyclops Cam:

In an effort to thwart drivers from using mannequins and blow-up dolls to pay cheaper fares when crossing the UK's Forth Road Bridge, officials are testing a new system that can detect the number of passengers in a car from up to 160-feet away. The Cyclops is based on technology developed at Loughborough University, and employs the fact that human skin contains a unique and measurable amount of water. In field tests the infrared Cyclops camera was able to measure vehicle occupancy with 95% accuracy, compared to 65% for human observers. The new system was seen as vital in monitoring traffic when new electronic tollbooths come online, which would further encourage cheating as they allow for variable rates depending on how many passengers are in the car.
 
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