It has something to do with the so-called "diamond lanes" — lanes marked with a diamond mark — which are also known as carpool lanes.

Now car pool lanes — lanes meant to be used only by vehicles with two or more people — are common in the US and more traffic-enlightened countries to encourage people to share cars in their commute to work and back and help ease traffic congestion.

In today’s world of high gasoline prices and global warming, car pool lanes can also help motorists save on fuel and minimize the emission of carbon oxides and other toxic particle into the air.

We’ve like to see car pool lanes established in Metro Manila, although we doubt it would be successful, mainly because we can’t see how the lanes can be properly policed, given our unruly motorists and the "ningas cogon" mentality of our traffic rules enforcers.

Even our implementation of the yellow lanes — lanes meant only for yellow-plated or public utility vehicles — have been, to say the least, spotty. Are these still being implemented at all?

But we do digress, don’t we? Getting back to our story about pregnant woman and car pool lanes, it seems even in the good ‘ole US of A, people use a lot of ingenious ways to try to get on the lanes when driving alone, including dressing up mannequins and blow-up dolls.

But a woman from Phoenix, Arizona, Candace Wilkinson, should win the most-ingenious-way-to-surreptitiously-use-car-pool-lane prize. (Another news site on the Net reporting on apparently the same story named her Candace Dickinson.)

The 23-year-old Wilkinson, on the last trimester of her pregnancy, just used the diamond-marked lane confidently.

And when spotted and pulled over by a traffic policeman, Phoenix Police Sgt. Dave Norton, confidently explained that she wasn’t driving alone.

She pointed to her obviously preggy tummy and said "I’m driving with my son. There are two of us in the car." Or something to that effect.

But the sergeant wasn’t about to let Ms. Wilkinson get away with her pregnant story and gave her a ticket.

Our story doesn’t end here.

Ms. Wilkinson went to court to challenge the ticket, saying the law — interestingly enough, the local criminal code — defines the baby still in her womb as already an individual and should count as another passenger in the car.

Well, the pregnant missy lost the case with the judge ruling that she clearly violated the law requiring at least two people in any vehicle on the carpool lane.

Even after being fined 0 for the violation plus court costs, Ms. Wilkinson still believes she was right.

"I understand the use of the lane. I don’t think I was wrong in using the lane, but that’s all I have to say," she reportedly told reporters after the ruling.

But she says she won’t use the carpool again while pregnant and alone in her car.