Traffic Cop to Hearse Driver: Dead Body Doesn't Count in Carpool Lane

A corpse is cargo, not a person, traffic cop tells hearse driver.
The hearse driver was let off with a warning. Nevada Highway Patrol

The Nevada state trooper laughed when a hearse driver said he was driving in the HOV lane because he was carrying a body.

A corpse is cargo, not a passenger, a Nevada Highway Patrol officer informed a hearse driver in the carpool lane.

The state trooper did get a chuckle, however, by the funeral home employee in Las Vegas who tried to pass off his casket-bound load as a qualification for the HOV lane.

"He won't count? He won't count?" the driver asks, while pointing to the deceased person behind him, bodycam footage shows.

"He is not with us anymore," the laughing trooper told him. "But for that I'll give you a warning."

He also admonished the driver to say in his non-carpool lane.

"In this job you hear people's excuses for different things all day long," trooper Travis Smaka told the Reno Gazette Journal. "And that's the most original one I've had yet in my career."

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