Nobody wants to waste their time sitting in traffic, and when there’s an option to speed up your journey – whether it’s a shortcut or a detour through a quiet route – it makes sense to take it. 

That being said, the list of reasonable time-saving techniques definitely does not extend to dressing up a toy skeleton and strapping him into your car so you can drive in the high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane. 

That’s what one man in Arizona tried his best to get away with, until officers from state’s Department of Public Safety caught up with him and found that the camouflage hat-wearing passenger wasn’t exactly as he seemed. 

After officers pulled over the 62-year-old driver, they found the fake skeleton – still covered in Halloween costume-style rags tied to the seat with a yellow piece of rope. 

The driver was given a penalty ticket, and the department tweeted a picture of the skeleton in a bid to warn other drivers against employing similar tactics. 

“Think you can use the HOV lane with Skeletor riding shotgun? You’re dead wrong!” a spokesperson wrote, in reference to the supervillan featured in the Masters of the Universe franchise.  

It’s a technique drivers in the area have used in the past – in 2019 a man was caught driving with a mannequin which was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. 

The department told AP news agency that around 7,000 drivers in Arizona were caught violating HOV rules every year.