Speed Cameras Nudge Safe Drivers by Entering Slow-Drivers into Lottery

December 7th, 2010

Speed cameras can be used as a stick to penalize those who speed, or can be used as a carrot to reward those who obey the speed limit. Here’s the description:

Now this, this is a traffic camera I can get behind. The Speed Camera Lottery, a winning project for Volkswagen’s Fun Theory series, sends tickets to speeders and enters law-abiding drivers in a lottery to win their money. Automatic auto-karma.

The Fun Theory is basically thus: people will do the right thing if you make the right thing fun to do. Winning other peoples’ money is totally fun, so Kevin Richardson designed a traffic camera that would facilitate just that. Bad drivers get tickets; good drivers get entered in a lottery to win the cash. And in this case the Fun Theory held true—the average speed of traffic went down 7 km/hour with the Lottery Camera installed.


H/T Gizmodo