Presumably the point of an HOV lane is to encourage people who would normally drive in their own vehicle to share a trip with someone else. Obviously the unbor

Presumably the point of an HOV lane is to encourage people who would normally drive in their own vehicle to share a trip with someone else. Obviously the unborn child doesn't have a choice about with whom he or she travels, so such encouragement is moot, but I suppose the same argument would apply to a newly born child too, or even a 12 year old who can't drive their own car, yet presumably they are counted as passengers. In any case, for reasons of practicality, the rules for HOV lanes probably need to be written in a way that spares police officers from having to determine the age of passengers and whether any of the female passengers are pregnant, even if this means pregnant women don't get the full benefit of carrying another life inside them.