On most weekday mornings, I drop my wife off at the bus stop. She often quips that I drop her off ‘on the side of the freeway’, which is completely accurate, but that’s where the bus stop happens to be. Most mornings, I’ll head to work after she’s safely on the bus. Other mornings, I return home to finish some tasks. On these days, I take a subtly different route to work.
This second route has a two-lane on-ramp onto the freeway. During heavy traffic, they designate one lane as carpool, and the other has a traffic light that regulates its flow. Since I’m driving alone, I take that lane. The traffic light has a sign that clearly states, “one vehicle per green light”. My total travel time is modest; the added minutes don’t significantly impact my life.
However, boredom and maybe morbid curiosity inspired me to look more closely at the vehicles zooming by on that carpool lane through the side mirror. Anecdotally, many (if not most) vehicles in that lane have only a driver. In other words, they’re not carpooling.