LOS ANGELES (AFP) – A pregnant woman in Texas who was fined for driving solo in a carpool lane said her fetus must be counted as a passenger.
Brandy Bottone, 32 years old and 34 weeks pregnant, vowed to go to court after she was pulled over in Dallas and handed a penalty by a police officer last month.
She was driving in a lane reserved for vehicles carrying at least two people – a fact she did not dispute.
But Bottone told a police officer that her unborn child was a person in the eyes of the law.
“He said, ‘Is there somebody else in the car?’” Bottone told CNN.
“I pointed at my stomach and I was like, ‘Right here’,” she recalled.
When the policeman said being pregnant “doesn’t count” as the two persons must be “outside the body,” Bottone insisted that “this is a baby”.
The Texas criminal code, like that of many conservative states, recognises a fetus as a “person”, but this does not appear to apply for laws regulating transportation.
