Drivers will do anything to try to avoid sitting in rush hour traffic, including enlisting the help of the undead. On Tuesday, Washington State Patrol reported that a trooper caught a carpool lane violator near Tacoma using a “zombie baby” as his second rider.
The doll was dressed in a pink onesie and black hat, and police said the man buckled it into the passenger side of his car before entering the high-occupancy vehicle lane. Trooper Guy Gill, public information officer for the Washington State Patrol District 1, tweeted a picture of the creepy prop strapped into the front seat.
Gill said the driver’s trick was not difficult for police to spot. “He did a good job dressing it up, he put some thought into it, but it was not hard to tell it was a not child,” he told the New York Daily News.
The driver was fined $136 for driving in the carpool lane, but police said they gave him a break for not having the doll in a car seat.
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Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com