In what may be the creepiest news I've read all year, British officials are installing a series of cameras designed to enforce the proper use of high-occupancy lanes by punishing solo drivers. How will they detect these scofflaws? By scanning each car that passes by with a camera that can tell how much blood is present in the car.

I wish I were making this up.

The system is a response to people who are using mannequins in passenger seats or—and even I have trouble believing people would actually do this—taping oversized pictures of people to the windshield, all as part of an effort to trick regular enforcement cameras into seeing a second person riding in the car. By scanning for blood (and other bodily fluids) using a special infrared camera system, such tricks won't work, at least until blood-filled mannequins hit the market.

Naturally, the government is defending the cameras as a necessary means to enforce the law and punish drivers for rampant abuse of the car-sharing lanes. Meanwhile, drivers are peeved over the privacy invasion implications of such a system.

Nevertheless the system is being rolled out soon in at least one area in the UK, with more installations looking likely in the near future. I shudder to imagine what might be next.

LINK: Roadside cameras that detect BLOOD will catch lone drivers who abuse car-sharing lanes