'You Gotta Be Kidding Me'

It would probably be a lot easier if you just car-pooled.

She tried to take us for a ride.

A woman drove around with an elaborately dolled-up mannequin -- complete with a brunette wig, make-up and immaculately styled clothes -- in an attempt to shimmy her way into the Long Island Expressway carpool lane.

But an eagle-eyed cop put the brakes on her plan when he noticed that the dummy was sporting shades on a cloudy day.

"This woman obviously put a lot of effort into this," said Suffolk County Sheriff Michael Sharkey.

A sheriff's officer spotted Kathleen Frascinella of Mount Sinai, LI, cruising west in a Chrysler down the LIE between Exits 57 and 58 at 7:20 a.m. Tuesday.

But Officer Robert Howard noticed that the brunette in the passenger seat was wearing sunglasses on an overcast winter day -- and had the sun visor down, even though the car was heading west in the morning.

When he pulled alongside, the officer said, he noticed that Frascinella was trying to pull a fast one -- using a dummy to get around the rule that at least two people be in the car while in the high-occupancy vehicle lane.

"I said, 'You gotta be kidding me,' " the officer told reporters yesterday.

Howard was so tickled by the trick that he opened with a joke: "Ma'am, I want your license and registration. And I want to see her ID as well."

Frascinella was not amused. Howard said that she snapped back that she saw no problem with her dummy, since everyone else is doing it.