Local transportation advocacy group Save Our SOVs is making HOV exemption cards available to Mercer Island commuters.
The cards, colloquially known as “Angry Suburbanite Seeking High Occupancy Lane Exemption” cards, are intended for Mercer Island single-occupant vehicle drivers to proffer to law enforcement officers when cited for driving in the I-90 or I-405 HOV lanes. They contain language excerpted from the 1976 Memorandum Agreement that, according to Save Our SOVs representatives, gives Mercer Island SOV traffic the ability to use all HOV lanes between downtown Seattle and Bellevue in perpetuity.
“How symbolic that in 1976, the same year that Americans celebrated the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, we Mercer Islanders signed a document declaring our own independence,” said Save Our SOVs spokesperson Gerd-Otto Mawae. “In our case, independence from having to drive in the same lanes as people from Bellevue and Issaquah.”
“I’m proud to carry around a card celebrating such a venerated part of our local heritage,” said Island life coach A. Sal Fishman. “I can’t wait to get pulled over by the Washington State Patrol so that I can use this card to humbly assert my Mercer Island privilege.”
“Yep,” said Seattle resident and Microsoft employee Carl Poole, as he studied one of the cards, “This is classic Mercer Island.”
For more information on these cards, visit Nextdoor or call 1-800-MI-TESLA.