Un-Ticketing: An Upside-Down Approach to Speed Compliance

Project Details
STATUS

In-Progress

PROJECT NUMBER

18-668, TR-759

START DATE

10/01/18

END DATE

12/31/23

FOCUS AREAS

Safety

RESEARCH CENTERS InTrans, CTRE, Iowa LTAP
SPONSORS

Iowa Department of Transportation
Iowa Highway Research Board

Researchers
Principal Investigator
John Shaw

Research Scientist, Public Science Collaborative

About the research

Conventional approaches to achieving compliance with speed limits are almost always punitive: speeders are intercepted and punished through fines or other sanctions. Nevertheless, psychological research and practical experience have shown that penalties and rewards are equally powerful motivators of human behavior. “Un-Ticketed” is an experiment to explore whether it is possible to improve speed compliance by incentivizing good behavior (in addition to punishing bad behavior). Specifically, the project will be a collaboration with one or more local police departments implement a contest where randomly-selected drivers who comply with the speed limit are rewarded with gift cards donated by local businesses. Traffic speeds in the selected areas will be monitored before, during, and after the intervention to identify impacts on speeds, and drivers will be surveyed to identify possible changes in attitudes about speeding. A guide will be produced to aid Iowa communities in applying this intervention.

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