Speed Camera Lottery Decreases Speeding by 22% in Fun Experiment | Hacker News Reader

Speed Camera Lottery Decreases Speeding by 22% in Fun Experiment

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36 pointsJangoSteve47 comments

I still think it was a brightly colored sign with a speed indicator that slowed the cars down, not the "lottery" part.

In Soviet Russia the Limit Camera Speeds You..

A few years ago there was an experiment in which similar camera (with speed reading) was installed on a inner circle of Moscow (called smth like "3rd transport circle"). The result? There was a huge increase in speed - people were actually COMPETING who can set a record! (Even worse - they were trying to catch a photo of the sign showing their extreme speeds). The camera was removed (as far as I know). Never seen any other cameras with actual speed indicator in Moscow ever since.

Actually there was another experiment that did work in Russia. On a highway a local group placed funeral wreaths (I'm not sure whether this is what they actually called in English) along the highway (there were no dead people, just wreaths). Net result? Everyone were driving within speed limit (which is almost unheard of in most of Russia). When pulled over drivers were asked about "why", the usual response was something like "well, it got me thinking that maybe it just isn't worth it to drive fast..."

> There was a huge increase in speed - people were actually COMPETING who can set a record!

We had that when those cameras were introduced in Norway too. The cameras were then changed to not displaying speeds above the limit - it now just says "over 50!" if the limit is 50. Solved the speed competition problem.

Funeral wreaths on the side of the road as decoration commemorating nothing reminds me of Ghost Bikes. It's bicycles spray-painted white, chained up close to the scene of fatal bike accidents, with a descriptive placard. It started in NYC and is now worldwide, and passing one always causes me to be doubly cautious, often giving me the chills.

http://ghostbikes.org

We had the same problem in Bucharest, Romania.

I saw something similar in Scotland a couple of years ago - on a particularly dangerous bend, there was a car positioned as if it had run off the road, with a "police aware" sign next to it. When I passed by the same spot three weeks later, it was still there - turned out it was deliberately put there to catch people's attention and act as a warning.

> funeral wreaths (I'm not sure whether this is what they actually called in English)

Yes that's the right word.

It's not uncommon in Ireland for crosses or headstones to be placed on the roadside where people have died.

In Texas, it's common to see crosses commemorating someone's death in a vehicle. Anecdotal evidence, but it's never gotten me to slow down. I just think, "Hey look, someone drove drunk here."

The problem I have with speed and red light cameras is that generally they are owned and operated by private corporations and they give the government a cut of fines collected. So in other words it isn't like the government investing in the equipment to keep people safe it is the government allowing a private corporation to to have it's way with people.

They for example sent me a speed camera ticket once where my car wasn't even the once captured as the speeder but my license plate was the only one visible since a jersey barrier was blocking the plate of the real culprit so they went ahead and sent it to me anyways even though it was blatantly obvious the ticket was improper. I had to go to court to and the ticket was immediately thrown out but not before I wasted 4 hours on a work day.

In witch country is this?

The Republic of California, among others, I'm sure.

Nothing like extremely bright strobe lights flashing in the middle of an intersection at night to improve traffic safety.

I'll guess it was in Salem MA.

Good thing there were no newts around.

The dichotomy you present implies that governments can't contract out efforts to make people safer. I don't see the logic behind that.

Separately, governments are perfectly capable of using law enforcement as a revenue generator, so that downside isn't specific to private companies.

The solution is to not let the private company get a commission. It should be a flat fee.

Ireland recently outsourced some 'speed vans' to catch people speeding. They went to great pains at launch to point out the company wasn't getting commission.

I'm implying that a for profit company has no motive to double check the tickets they send out it is to their advantage to send out false tickets because there is no penalty to them for the government eventually loosing the court case.

In this case the ticket was like $80 for a minor speeding infraction, 6 over the limit. I took a half day off my job to dispute that I had to drive to the very heard of down town in a busy metro area to get to the court house. Tell me if I had any common sense and no principles what is it that I should have done?

That isn't to say the government doesn't have the same motive to maximize revenue but I can't imagine the instinct being as strong as for a for profit company.

When I was in college, the local towing company gave to the city a street sweeping machine. Naturally, that machine needed to be used, and to use it, there can't be any cars along the side of the road. That led to new rules about what side of which street on which day has parking prohibited. Naturally, the city had to call the tow truck company to remove any cars that parked in the way of their new sweeper.

Genius.

If I had the money -- not that it would take all that much -- I would like to set up cameras, maybe webcams or CCTV cameras on a building that had a good view of the street. Then I would run x frames daily through an OCR program and keep a public online database of dates and times where certain license plates were seen.

I hope this would help people realize what they're giving up by allowing these cameras and their potential for abuse by a figure much more powerful and connected than just some guy who set up a few cameras, and maybe lead to a revolt against this kind of monitoring.

What's the issue here? Enforcement is only a problem if the laws being enforced are restrictive. If they make it illegal to be a Jew, then we have a problem with the cameras. If they're only using it to do what police officers already do (monitor traffic violations) then the only difference is that police have more resources to deal with more important crimes.

The thing is that while they come under apparently "reasonable" auspices, like automating traffic cops, they are still cameras that already have all the fundamental components of a surveillance system; it just has to be hooked up to a database somewhere and the same thing is easily implemented. They already have OCR software reading plates and printing out and mailing tickets, so if the feds, a state, or municipality were so inclined, they could without much additional effort tack on a database that tracked what-cars-were-where.

That's just one nefarious purpose and deployment, I'm sure if we thought about it more we'd come up with many others. The CCTV cameras that litter Britain were also installed under the "reasonable" auspice of catching people who stab each other. The red-light cameras are not so blatant, but the principle is the same, and as people become more and more acclimated to those, it'll be an easier sell to do Britain-like CCTV monitoring.

So it's really an issue of trust. Do you trust the government to keep their promises and never use these widely-deployed networks of cameras for evil? Do we believe that the government will only ever use these to catch those who violate traffic law? Do we expect an equitable and reasonable enforcement when we outsource to machines? If you're speeding because your wife is in labor or your grandma is dying and you get pulled over, the policeman will usually do an immediate reversal and offer an escort instead of a citation. Do we want to replace that with automated cameras so that one with a medical emergency gets 3-4 tickets from machines that detected he violated the speed limit or ran a red light on the way to the hospital?

The Constitution is proactive against the attainment of such government power because its framers knew that even though you may have one set of administrators that are pretty good and upright, the next set may be more crooked, and when the crooked people see all this unexploited potential, they're that much more likely to attempt to attain to a position that will allow them to enact uncouth practices.

I agree it is a brilliant idea with good design. It's a great way to bribe the general public into supporting police state measures such as the ubiquitous installation of cameras and monitoring. "Support Big Brother - You Might Already Be a Winner!"

Supporting these sorts of very clever social control programs is very consistent with the history of Volkswagen Corporation, which has a long history of corporation and government working hand in hand, such as the origins of the Beetle as a car of the people brought to them by the benevolent oversight of their Fatherland.

Interesting observation. Though, just to be clear, this promotional series VW has been doing called "The Fun Theory" is merely meant to observe how fun can affect human behavior for the better. The tie-in with their brand, of course, is that fun IS functional.

This is the first/only experiment connected with the government (and the Swedish government at that). The rest have been environmental or health-related (making more people recycle, take the stairs, etc).

Stairs at a subway station, public waste cans and bottle recycling centers are all government controlled things that are presented to people as good stuff the government has made which is for the public's own good. I do not contest at all that there are benefits to throwing away trash, walking up stairs or recycling glass containers. But I observe these are all elements of social control by the government. Surely among the tens of thousands of proposals, not all of them were things that government is responsible for and which deal with social control "for their own good". Yet that is the only thing that is selected for these pieces, which does in fact show that this is the chosen focus by Volkswagen for this program. Not too controversial though to say so since ht their Fun theory site states clearly it is all about "changing people's behavior", and changing behavior is about controlling people.

Are you less free because of trash cans?

But was there any actual safety improvement? Its not a double blind study or anything, but it would be interesting to know if the street got safer.

It's interesting that the average speed on this road was already as low as 32 km/h, and dropped to 25 km/h. At these speeds, I doubt there were any traffic accidents in the first place.

good point. 32 km/h is only 20 miles per hour

Interesting. I wonder would the cars in this video be significantly different than cars in the US as I have a hard time keeping my car that slow regardless of the road I'm on?

I don't understand why law enforcement is so focused on driving speeds. I suppose it's just because it lends itself readily to quantization and photography.

Other actions are far more dangerous than driving fast. Failure to signal is pretty much a pandemic around here, and when people do signal, it's only after they've already slowed, just before the turn (clue: turn signal is supposed to be a warning that I'm about to slow down).

Less frequent, but also very dangerous, is incorrectly turning onto a multi-lane road (for right turns, rightmost lane turns into rightmost lane; next lane turns into next lane, etc. For left turns, leftmost lane turns into leftmost lane, etc.) In my experience no one observes this, and very few people seem even aware -- but the consequence (that I've witnessed enough times, and even experienced) is to force other cars right off the road, or worse, toward incoming traffic.

And, of course, bad lane discipline (failure to keep right, a/k/a/ "left lane dick") isn't a direct danger, but impedes the flow of traffic, and results in other people doing stupid things.

I don't believe that speed enforcement yields much safety improvement; it's just easier and delivers revenues to the authorities. If they were really interested in safety they'd enforce these other laws, but how many people have you ever heard of being ticketed for those other infractions?

ADDENDUM: Another evil behavior I forgot to mention: reading while driving. Lately we hear a lot about using cell phones or texting while driving. But a few times a month I see people actually reading books or the newspaper while driving. This is the most dangerous thing I can imagine. I once called the police about this on their "report aggressive driving" line (my wife was driving), and they weren't terribly interested.

I don’t know about the US but nearly two in five deaths in traffic accidents are caused by speeding in Germany.

Reducing deaths is probably the first priority, which would explain why infractions that usually only result in low speed collisions with no deaths are not as strictly enforced.

nearly two in five deaths in traffic accidents are caused by speeding in Germany

I challenge you to demonstrate that it's speeding in itself that led to the accidents. I might believe that it's speeding in conjunction with other asinine behavior, e.g., you change lanes unexpectedly, and since you're going really fast, neither driver has a chance to react. But in such cases, the speed isn't root cause, it's an aggravating factor.

Why not go for the root cause, rather than concentrating almost exclusively on the aggravating factor?

Why should I demonstrate that? You are the one making assertions without evidence.

Ummm. Perhaps you forgot about the part where you claimed, without citation, that "nearly two in five deaths in traffic accidents are caused by speeding in Germany". So it would seem we're both guilty.

The difficulty in providing any kind of documentation here is that there are many orthogonal factors at play, making it difficult to say much of anything without very carefully defining terms. For example, (http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=5309267 )

The bad news is [between 2000 and 2008, in Utah,] 110 people died because they weren't wearing a seat belt, by far the No. 1 reason, outranking things like speed, fatigue, DUIs or distractions.

Clearly, not wearing a seat belt is not a cause of an accident. It's an aggravating factor, making the results worse in the event that an accident does occur. I submit that in most cases, speed fills the same role.

Consider the wikipedia article at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Traffic_fatal...

# That the evidence shows that the risk of having a crash is increased both for vehicles traveling slower than the average speed, and for those traveling above the average speed.

# That the risk of being injured increases exponentially with speeds much faster than the median speed.

# That the severity of a crash depends on the vehicle speed change at impact.

# That there is limited evidence that suggests that lower speed limits result in lower speeds on a system wide basis.

# That most crashes related to speed involve speed too fast for the conditions.

A close reading of this reveals that it's not generally one's absolute speed (e.g., the fact that they're going 80MPH), but their speed relative to most other drivers, irrespective of the speed limit. So if the speed limit is 65 and I'm going 75 along with most of the traffic, my risk is minimized; slowing to the posted speed increases risk.

The third bullet seems to support my claim. It does not say that crashes are more likely at higher speeds, but that the severity of a crash, when one does occur, will be worse.

Finally, the last bullet again references speed relative to conditions. Thus, on a given road in given weather, visibility, traffic, etc., 80MPH may be just as safe as 65 under other conditions; and in winter conditions, even 40MPH might be more dangerous than any of those. It's not the speed as such, particularly with respect to any particular posted one-size-fits-all number, but the speed relative to actual conditions. But the laws regarding speed limits do not recognize this at all.

So again, for a meaningful debate, I think we need to separate the discussion into causes of accidents, aggravating factors for accident severity, and the way in which laws address these issues.

No point in continuing here, just one thing: You don’t have “60 when wet” or digital traffic signs with speed limits in the US?

(I’m more than happy to accept numbers on good faith. If someone cites a number I just assume that it is well sourced, at least if it seems plausible. I just applied that assumption to myself but if you have to know my source is here: http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/In...)

I've always wondered why gamification wasn't integrated into things beyond web apps. Gamification is a concept, a lens through which we can enact persuasive design - there's nothing in there that says its web specific. Lots of Web 2.0 concepts came from 'real world' product design; I don't see why the relationship can't go both ways.

This video presents a neat idea, however they haven't explained their method. So we don't know how they arrived at the "22% reduction" conclusion.

* Was there a speed camera visible to motorists on that stretch of road before this experiment? If not, people might be slowing down because they are now passing a speed camera.

* What time of year was the before and after done? From the video it looks like Scandanavia. Was the after section during the winter and the before during the summer? People would (I assume) adjust their driving speed based on weather conditions, which might explain the reduction.

etc.

Just today I tought of a counter in the speed control traffic lights to count how many time the light turned red. This could incentivate drivers to stay under the limit and keep the traffic flowing.

It's really annoying to be stopped by another unaware driver just over the limit, this could make everybody fight for the lowest score and be ashamed when they contribute to it. What do you think?

Please spoil the surprise. I don't want to watch a 2 minute video when I can read a two-sentence explanation, like:

"Speeders have their photo taken, and get issued tickets, the funds from which go into a pot. People who obey the speed limit get their photo taken, too, and are entered in a lottery to win back some of the money from the tickets."

wouldn't installing just the portion that mails fines for speeding decrease speeding by 22% as well?

people aren't slowing down because they might win. they just don't want to get fined.

If they already have the speed camera installed (assuming they did... thats how they got the before figure), then I would think the mailing the ticket part already exists.

I know all the red-light cameras (close enough) in Toronto get the tickets mailed out. You can even pay them online now!

I would have to assume that this absolutely is the case. As far as I can figure, there'd be no way to get percentage decrease in speeding without already having a speed camera installed as a baseline. Without a speed camera, the only way to measure speeding is by number of tickets issued by police at that exact intersection. But police would only ever be able to catch a small percentage of all speeders, whereas speed cameras could potentially catch all speeders. So installing a speed camera would likely show an increase in the number of speeding tickets issued, whether or not the actual number of speeders changed.

In fact, a cursory googling turns up no studies showing whether speed cameras actually decrease the number of speeders. Only inference can be made, as studies DO show that speed cameras decrease the number of injuries and deaths.

Excellent point your research suggests:

There are few if any prior case-studies regarding the effectiveness of speed cameras.

But they are good at generating money.

What's wrong with generating money? Why not let the people disobeying the law pay for the roads?

The best way to measure the effect of speed cameras on speeding to have some hidden cameras monitoring the section of road, recording speeds. Motorists should not be able to see them. Then collect some baseline data. Then install the speed camera. Collect more data (from the original camera). Compare the two.

Same in my city of Chicago ... but in this example it's just more marked and apparent that you'll get a fine (i.e. directly in the middle of the intersection showing your speed). If there was already a speed camera installed, it probably would be indicated by some average looking sign a mile back.

Greed, not fun motivates people, that's what it looks like in this case anyway.

Has there ever been an instance of a speed camera malfunctioning in such a way that the limit enforced by the camera is reduced, having the effect of ticketing every driver on the road?

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