Image copyright Arizona Department of Public Safety Image caption The car was pulled over when an official noticed the skeleton in the passenger seat

A driver in the US has been caught trying to disguise a fake skeleton as a passenger so he could use a high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety said the 62-year-old was pulled over when an official noticed the skeleton, which was wearing a hat and tied to the passenger seat with yellow rope.

The driver was given a penalty ticket.

The department told AP news agency some 7,000 drivers in Arizona were caught violating HOV rules every year.

In a post on Twitter, it warned others against trying the same tactics.

"Think you can use the HOV lane with Skeletor riding shotgun? You're dead wrong!" it wrote, referring to the fictional nemesis of He-Man in the Masters of the Universe series.

It ended the post with the hashtags "#NiceTry" and "#YoureNotHeMan".

The post was accompanied by a picture from the car, showing the fake skeleton with a camouflage bucket hat pulled over its eyes.

The Arizona man is not the first to have gone to extreme lengths to avoid rules preventing drivers with no passengers from driving in particular lanes.

Last April, a man was caught driving in an HOV lane with a mannequin wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, AP reports.

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