I’m saying the purpose of the car pool lane is to provide a faster ride to those with more than 1 person in the car. If you are driving with the flow of traffic to your right, you shouldn’t be in the car pool lane. If you want to move at that pace get into a lane moving at that pace.
Carpool lanes in California are controlled access. You can’t just move right at any time. There are sections of the road that I drove each day where the regular lanes move faster. Overall, though, the HOV lanes move faster.