Hybrid vehicle drivers are special!

Owners of hybrid vehicles should be able to apply as soon as May 1 for special stickers to allow them to drive with no passengers in high-occupancy vehicle and high-occupancy toll lanes in Colorado at no cost.

The state will award 2,000 stickers by lottery to a pool of 17,000 hybrid owners in Colorado.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8443437

I am not sure what the point of these waivers are. If the point is to reward those people who get good gas mileage, then why not base it on that? If the reward is for low emission cars then why not base it on that? A hybrid Ford Escape gets about 32 miles per gallon, there are many cars that are not hybrids that get better mileage. I am not as sure about emissions, but if that is the qualifier for this pass then why doesn’t the government just say that and then any car that qualifies could try for one of these passes. This idea seems like a half baked idea, and what happen in the futre when we have 100,000 hybrid vehicles on the road?