Carrot & Stick: This Traffic Camera Is a Little Different: Drive the Speed Limit and You Get Paid

I prefer that everyone fight their tickets and overwhelm the traffic courts to force the traffic cops to stop having quotas. Then traffic tickets would be given for blatant violations, not in traps, cops will quit using radar and learn how to really direct traffic when needed.

This Traffic Camera Is a Little Different: Drive the Speed Limit and You Get Paid

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. [YouTube]

Send an email to Kyle VanHemert, the author of this post, at kvanhemert@gizmodo.com.