Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Kiddie poolers are not removing cars I car pooled with classmates and their parents as a kid.
count unlicensed riders as half a person. That way a carpool with two kids and one adult is HOV.
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Pregnant woman given HOV ticket argues fetus is passenger, post-Roe
21–28 of 28 posts
Re: Pregnant woman given HOV ticket argues fetus is passenger, post-Roe
#22"Bottone, who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, pointed to her stomach. Even though she said her 'baby girl is right here,' Bottone said one of the deputies she encountered on June 29 told her it had to be 'two bodies outside of the body.' While the state’s penal code recognizes a fetus as a person, the Texas Transportation Code does not." I would be extremely surprised if the state's transportation code specificall…
What about those 3+ hov lanes? Simple! Twins!
Re: Pregnant woman given HOV ticket argues fetus is passenger, post-Roe
#23Roe v. Wade didn't protect abortions at 34 weeks already. And if the kid's a passenger, it needs to be in a child safety seat.
Sounds like this needs to be tested by the supreme court. An unborn kid can't each be a kid, a passenger, a foetus, inside the mother, and outside the mother at the same time. Their ruling would probably be that the kids needs to be removed from the womb by the mother for the duration of the journey, whereupon it will be safely secured in a child seat in the second row, then placed back in the womb once the journey h…
> Sounds like this needs to be tested by the supreme court.
Not really, the supreme court just decided that it's up to the legislative branch to decide things like this.
Re: Pregnant woman given HOV ticket argues fetus is passenger, post-Roe
#24I have always felt it should be 'Two or more LICENSED persons per vehicle". The idea is to remove cars from the road for the HOV lanes. Kiddie poolers are not removing cars, they are just giving them VIP access. Remove extra drivers by sharing is the intent. Make it so!
That might be the intention, but it creates a hurdle to using the lane AND create another racket to police people for. HOV lanes cause traffic with a "QoS" capping roadway bandwidth while creating a channel for multiple drivers.
If you want to incentivize efficient highway use, deny it to all but multiple humans over the age of 0 days (no pun intended).
And then beyond that, rip up highways and replace them with train services.
Re: Pregnant woman given HOV ticket argues fetus is passenger, post-Roe
#25"Bottone, who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, pointed to her stomach. Even though she said her 'baby girl is right here,' Bottone said one of the deputies she encountered on June 29 told her it had to be 'two bodies outside of the body.' While the state’s penal code recognizes a fetus as a person, the Texas Transportation Code does not." I would be extremely surprised if the state's transportation code specificall…
NOTE: this is a sarcastic, but non-fictional, commentary on how law and lawyers make the world a better place, not on who's right about anything contraversial.
> The Texas Department of Transportation says the HOV lane can be used by "a vehicle occupied by two or more people"
The DOT website isn't authoritative of course
The offense would seem to be from the transportation code 452.0613(d)(2):
https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/transportation-code/transp-sect...
452.0613(d)(2) operating a vehicle in or entering a high occupancy vehicle lane operated, managed, or maintained by an authority with fewer than the required number of *occupants*.
The penal code has different definitions of "Person" than the transportation code:
https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-1-07.html
1.07(26) "Individual" means a human being who is alive, including an *unborn child at every stage of gestation* from fertilization until birth.
1.07(38) “Person” means an *individual* or a corporation, association, limited liability company, or other entity or organization governed by the Business Organizations Code.
https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/transportation-code/transp-sect...
455.412(a) A person commits an offense if the person operates a passenger vehicle, transports a child who is younger than eight years of age, unless the child is taller than four feet, nine inches, and does not keep the child secured during the operation of the vehicle in a child passenger safety seat system according to the instructions of the manufacturer of the safety seat system.
A possible defense could be to claim that the mother's womb was in this case the "child passenger safety seat system" and also, being the manufacturer, she had secured the child in accordance with her own instructions.
I hope she takes this to court, I have a feeling they'd dismiss the ticket rather than have these arguments, but if they do it'd be interesting...
Re: Pregnant woman given HOV ticket argues fetus is passenger, post-Roe
#26People who want to ban or limit abortion through the criminal code by definition give police more power not less.
That’s not necessarily the case because if a foetus is legally a person, then they gain rights they wouldn’t otherwise have.
This article is about the law enforcement’s power to make that call
Re: Pregnant woman given HOV ticket argues fetus is passenger, post-Roe
#27"Bottone, who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, pointed to her stomach. Even though she said her 'baby girl is right here,' Bottone said one of the deputies she encountered on June 29 told her it had to be 'two bodies outside of the body.' While the state’s penal code recognizes a fetus as a person, the Texas Transportation Code does not." I would be extremely surprised if the state's transportation code specificall…
>I say they should let her go in the HOV lane.
I think if this ends the debate on whether a fetus is a life or not, then so be it.
But I suspect many pregnant women will still want the right to be selective of when to treat it as a separate life and when not to...
Re: Pregnant woman given HOV ticket argues fetus is passenger, post-Roe
#28"Bottone, who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, pointed to her stomach. Even though she said her 'baby girl is right here,' Bottone said one of the deputies she encountered on June 29 told her it had to be 'two bodies outside of the body.' While the state’s penal code recognizes a fetus as a person, the Texas Transportation Code does not." I would be extremely surprised if the state's transportation code specificall…
> What's the functional difference between in an en-wombed child and a recently released one in this situation? What is the difference between a 20 and 21 year old? Just a dividing line that is easy to understand. I’m ok with that. Laws should be easy to understand even if they include lines that seem arbitrary immediately on one side or the other.
Does that apply to maximum ages for drinking, voting, signing contracts and driving? No, we have no maximum ages because older people are a more powerful constituency than 20 or 17 year-olds. Pregnant people are not a powerful enough constituency for these laws to provide them leniency. It's not about the life of the fetus either the movement limiting or banning abortion is out to change culture such that people are more afraid to wait to have children.