If carpool lanes are reserved to encourage people to commute together and as a result have fewer drivers on the road, shouldn't the number of people needed for the carpool lane include licensed drivers only?

How are you going to determine if everyone in a car is a legal driver, even if they are all of age?
Stopping every car to check IDs would defeat one purpose of the lanes which is to reduce the time it takes to get to work. Not to mention it would probably not be legal to check every ID without probable cause anyway.

I have to agree with @WestRiverrat on this one.

Should and having the ability to enforce it are not the same thing. You are not answering my question.

@tinyfaery You bring up a very valid point. While that may be the logical solution, I think in practice in may not be as viable as what @WestRiverrat had said.

I believe it encourages the drivers to take passengers who would otherwise go in yet another car. Instead of Mom taking the kids to school, Dad takes them and then continues on to work – one less car on the road.

The lanes should be taken advantage of by more than 1 or 2 licensed drivers but like others say, it would be a nightmare to enforce. It’s one of those deals where it’s left to the public to want to reduce general traffic more than they want to reduce their own immediate traffic times. How to answer just YES without getting modded? I waited to answer but basically the whole idea of commuter lanes is to reduce the number of drivers.

It would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming to check that.

I’ve worked with people who didn’t have drivers licenses. It seems a bit unfair to keep them out.

This commentator makes some interesting points about the economic tradeoffs and murky ethics of using the carpool lane as a solo driver.

I would wager that anywhere congested enough to have car pool lanes has at least 80% and maybe 90% single-passenger traffic.

The small number who already “carpool” with their kids get a little bonus for the day. Mazel tov for them. No biggie for me.

Maybe I’m taking my kids and the neighbor’s kids to school. One less car. Bless my soul.

To answer your question…....no and here is why. i stopped a woman driver for being in the HOV lanes one morning by herself. well, by herself until i walked up to her vehicle and discovered a set of twins in car seats. i could not see their heads from behind her vehicle. the fact remains that her children are human beings and that qualifies them as passengers without a drivers license. in every situation, there are circumstances that have to be considered and this is one of them.