Oregon Woman Fined for Teddy Bear Riding Shotgun in HOV Lane

An Oregon Woman was fined $260 for riding in the car pool lane on Interstate 5 with a giant teddy bear as her passenger.

A woman who strapped a teddy bear into the passenger seat of her car was busted for attempting to use the carpool lane, according to the Daily Mail. Scarlett Zibritovsky was driving through Portland, Oregon when the proverbial light bulb went off inside her head. Instead of having a useless teddy bear in the back seat, Scarlett thought he would serve a much better purpose in the front seat. Unfortunately for Zibritovsky, authorities didn’t feel the same way.

“He was in the back seat for a while I thought it might make my car cuter if he was riding in front with me,” Scarlett Zibritovsky told KATU.

Zibritovsky said she was going on a camping trip and trying to get home quickly and suspected the bear just might give her a leg up on her fellow drivers.  “I was trying to get home I was going on camping trip trying to get home fast, I knew it wasn’t right thing to do, I just got over thought if I can get a couple cars ahead of me why not,” she said.

The officer who pulled Scarlett over snapped a photo of her unusual “passenger,” and uploaded it to the Portland Police Facebook Page. The bear, according to Zibritovsky, has been riding around with her for a couple of months awaiting its potential donation to goodwill or a child.

Asked if she thought she could get away with her bear-based ruse, Scarlett appeared to agree, “yeah, in a way,” she said.  ”I was driving in HOV lane with teddy bear it looked like a person I’m a good Samaritan, I normally don’t break the law.”

For now, Zibritovsky says she has learned her lesson and won’t be offering up her passenger seat to any giant teddy bears.  ”Live and learn,” she said.  “Definitely learned not to fake a passenger with a huge bear.”

Zibritovsky says she plans to go to court to see if she can get the fine reduced.

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