A person attempted to use an “imaginary friend” to evade tolls while driving the express lane on Interstate 880, police said. The driver was pulled over Wednesday at about 3 p.m. in the northbound direction near Industrial Boulevard in Hayward, Kylie Musselman, a spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol, told SFGATE. A photo posted to the CHP Hayward social media account shows a car’s passenger seat dressed with a bucket hat on the headrest and a shirt on the upper portion of the seat.The officer stopped the driver because the FasTrak transponder on the car, the device that sends an electric signal for toll collection, indicated that there were three occupants in the vehicle. But the officer could “clearly see” there was only one, Musselman said.The Bay Area’s express lane system, which laces some of the area’s freeways, including I-880, requires tolls during periods of heavy traffic. The dynamic pricing, which varies according to how many drivers are using the lane, can be as high as $15 in some places.Cars with more than one occupant are entitled to a reduced toll, or they don’t pay one at all. On I-880, three occupants are required to escape toll charges completely, which drivers signal to the system through a setting on their FasTrak devices indicating that three people are in the car.Musselman said one of the most common ways CHP sees people evading FasTrak is by changing the setting to three occupants when there is only one. When drivers notice officers, they will often change the device back to one and move out of the carpool lane. If the transponder is not set to the correct number of occupants, drivers face a citation of $238, CHP said in its Facebook post. And only real people count.“Imaginary friends don’t count as ‘Occupants’ when setting a Fastrak transponder,” CHP said in a Thursday news release. “Yesterday, this driver thought he could outsmart our Officers on patrol but failed.”Musselman said CHP has also seen dummies and plastic skeletons as a way for single drivers to use the HOV carpool lane. In August, a Bay Area driver was busted for using a realistic-looking mannequin in a Highway 101 carpool lane.On Highway 101, cheating drivers have become a growing concern between Palo Alto and South San Francisco, Peter Skinner, an executive officer of the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, recently told SFGATE.Skinner said it’s difficult for cheating drivers to be caught because automatic cameras that could take photos of passengers inside cars are illegal. FasTrak evaders are caught by CHP officers, he said.The driver with the “imaginary friend” on Wednesday was caught by a CHP officer specifically assigned to look for carpool evaders, Musselman said.