Albuquerque and Portland installed speed sensors that reward drivers who obey the law with green lights. The same drivers who were already obeying the law. The cities spent taxpayer money to build a system that gives gold stars to people who were not speeding in the first place.
The sensors detect your speed. If you drive at or below the limit, you get an earlier green light. If you speed, you wait. This is traffic engineering designed by someone who thinks humans are laboratory rats. Push the lever, get the pellet. Except the pellet is not sitting at a red light for an extra thirty seconds while you question every decision that led you to live in Albuquerque.
The people who speed will continue to speed. They will blow through the red light you are virtuously waiting at because you wanted that early green. You followed the rules. You got your reward. And now you are sitting in the intersection with a Honda Civic embedded in your passenger door.
Portland joined in because Portland cannot resist any policy that lets residents feel morally superior about something mundane. Driving the speed limit is now an identity. You are a Good Driver. You get the green light early. You probably have a coexist bumper sticker and you definitely tell people you compost.
The system assumes speeders care about red lights. They do not. Speeders are not racing to appointments. They are not late for work. They are speeding because they have decided traffic laws are suggestions for people less important than them. You cannot incentivize someone who has already opted out of the social contract by offering them a shorter wait at the social contract factory.
Albuquerque could have spent the money on literally anything else. Road repairs. Crosswalks. A giant statue of a green light to celebrate their achievement. Instead they built a machine that rewards compliance with the baseline expectation of operating a motor vehicle.
The speeders are still speeding and now they know exactly which intersections have sensors.
Photo by Holger Woizick on Unsplash
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