But the legislation/rules concerning car pooling or ride sharing takes no account of whether or not anyone is pregnant.
You have to assess this situation while keeping in mind the purpose of the people who wrote the law or who are administering it. Is there someone sitting in the passenger seat or back seat(s) or not? That's their concern.
Yes, I think I made it quite clear there's no dispute over whether HOV regulations take a position on whether a fetus is a bunch of cells or a living human.
Hence the question about exactly what definitions should be used. Many legal quirks arise from situations that either weren't considered when the law was written or were presumably not considered to be relevant. It might be pretty widely understood what the intention of the HOV laws are but what matters is what the rule actually says. If the rule says something like "two or more persons must be present within the vehicle" without explicitly stating they must be occupying multiple seats or otherwise excluding a human inside the womb of another human, it provides a pretty easy basis for a pregnant woman to argue that two or more persons
are present within the vehicle.
If this woman is successful in her appeal it's hard to see a future that doesn't include the HOV regulations being revised to explicitly state that more than one seat in the vehicle must be occupied by a living human (which would also incidentally prohibit funeral directors driving solo with a body in the back of the hearse from using HOV lanes). That doesn't change the potential for this to be a legal loophole. Ultimately I imagine what this woman wants to do is avoid paying a fine using any grounds possible.
