
“At first it was kind of a joke,” says Laura Aaben, an innovation adviser for the interior ministry, referring to the idea of timeouts. “But we kept coming back to it.” Elari Kasemets, Ms Aaben’s counterpart in the police, explained that, in interviews, drivers frequently said that having to spend time dealing with the police and being given a speeding ticket was more annoying than the cost of the ticket itself. “People pay the fines, like bills, and forget about it,” he said. (In Estonia, speeding fines generated by automatic cameras are not kept on record and have no cumulative effect, meaning that drivers don’t have their licences revoked if they get too many.)
Making drivers wait requires manpower. The team acknowledges that the experiment is not currently scalable, but hopes that technology could make it so in the future. Public reaction, though, was not what they expected. “It’s been very positive, surprisingly,” says Helelyn Tammsaar, who manages projects for the innovation unit.
by The Economist | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Pretty smart. I imagine the the babysitting problem could be overcome with temporary geotags or something. See also: Japanese commuters try new ways to deter gropers (The Economist).]