Sweden's Speed Cameras Once Ran A Lottery That Rewarded Slow Drivers With Cash - Jalopnik

Speed limit signs are abundant, warning drivers not to exceed a certain threshold, and everyone knows what happens if a cop busts you. Get caught, and you'll be ticketed, get points on your license, or worse. Still, many speed despite these legal risks, and the behavior can be traced all the way back to 1904 with the first speeder jailing.

So, how do you get people to slow the heck down? One way is to incentivize them. 

In 2010, an experiment in Stockholm, Sweden rewarded drivers for obeying the speed limit. Using traffic cameras, Sweden's National Society for Road Safety and Volkswagen placed drivers obeying the speed limit into a lottery drawing, issuing winners payments. While those payments were said to be funded by ticketed drivers, Volkswagen Sweden backed them. Let's take a closer look at why Volkswagen brought this concept to the table, along with who generated the idea in the first place.

Where did the idea of a safe speed lottery come from?

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Volkswagen held a contest in 2010 to figure out if it could make safe speeds more fun. Changing drivers' general perception of speed is no easy task, so it makes sense that Volkswagen used crowdsourcing. American Kevin Richardson, who was a Nickelodeon producer at the time, won with his idea of penalizing speeders with tickets, then using those fines to pay better-behaved drivers. 

The experiment was short-lived, only lasting three days. Five people took home cash for their model driving. Among the 25,000 drivers monitored, there was one grand prize winner, Bengt Holmström, who took home 20,000 Swedish krona (About $3,190 in today's USD when adjusted for inflation). Four other drivers won 10,000 krona ($1,594 today when adjusted for inflation) each. For three days' worth of calm driving, that's a pretty good payday. Those reviewing the experiment found that the average speed of cars driving through a tested school zone was reduced from 32km/h (20 mph) before its three-day run to 25km/h (16 mph) during the trial.

Rewards are fun but constant surveillance isn't great

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This speed camera program isn't in place anymore, even though there was a myth circulating on social media around 2021 claiming it was still active. The test was conducted again in 2011, in five different Swedish cities, but that's it. No more slow-poke rewards. 

Some would consider this program ending a good thing, though. While it's a cute way to incentivize driving carefully, it requires constant behavioral surveillance. That might seem trivial in an age where Flock cameras follow you wherever you go, AI companies data-mine everything you do, and your phone's microphone is a wiretap that records your entire life. But does the public really want even more monitoring? It all seems to add up to something bleakly dystopian. 

Should good driving be rewarded? Sure, but maybe put the onus on insurance companies. Several insurance companies already have rewards for certain periods of accident-free time, which are usually discounts on their bill. But what if insurance companies paid out in cold, hard cash? If insurance companies gave cash bonuses, perhaps $1,000 for every year without an accident or a ticket, drivers would likely be more careful throughout the year. Sweden and Volkswagen basically proved the incentive works.