My modest proposal is to make the cost more immediate, and costly in time as well as monetary terms: Let's have road spikes that deploy on the white lines at traffic lights, 0.1 seconds after the light turns red. Any red light runners then face an immediate and severe cost of four new tires (blown out by the road spikes). On top of that, it pretty much ensures that there would be no drivers for whom the benefits of red light running outweigh the cost - because the time cost alone (of being forced to stop because all your tires are flat) is sure to exceed the time benefit of running a red light. And that's without considering the monetary cost.My solution was based on increasing the costs of red light running, so that the costs would outweigh the benefits, and this would incentivise more drivers to obey red lights. Of course, my post was (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek. However, the Indian city of Mumbai is dealing with another traffic issue - the high propensity of drivers to use their horn when stopped at intersections, even if they are stopped at a red light. Their solution has a certain similarity to my solution to red light running. As reported by The Weather Channel:
For the Mumbai's perpetual honkers, who love to blare the horns of their vehicles even when the traffic signal is red, the Mumbai Traffic Police has quietly come up with an unique initiative to discipline them in order to curb the alarming rise in the noise pollution levels in the country's commercial capital.
From Friday (January 31, 2020), it has installed decibel meters at certain select but heavy traffic signals to deter the habitual honkers through a campaign named 'The Punishing Signal'.
Joint Police Commissioner (Traffic) Madhukar Pandey said that the decibel monitors are connected to traffic signals around the island city, and when the cacophony exceeds the dangerous 85-decibel mark due to needless honking, the signal timer resets, entailing a double waiting time for all vehicles.
The benefit of sounding your horn in frustration at waiting is psychological - drivers wouldn't save any time by using their horn. But the costs are also low, so the drivers probably think, 'why not?'. Making the noisy drivers wait longer increases the costs of sounding their horn, and should incentivise drivers to be a little quieter.
Can we tackle red light running next, please?
[HT: Marginal Revolution]
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