Sweden's speed camera lottery pays drivers for obeying the limit — average speeds drop 22%

In January 2010, San Francisco game designer Kevin Richardson won Volkswagen's Fun Theory contest with a deceptively simple idea: point a speed camera at traffic, ticket the speeders — and enter everyone who obeys the limit into a lottery. The Swedish National Society for Road Safety (NTF) and Volkswagen Sweden built it as a real trial on Karlbergsvägen outside Gustaf Vasa school in Stockholm.

For three days at the end of September 2010, the rig clocked almost 25,000 cars. Drivers who kept to the limit were photographed and entered into a draw; one won 20,000 kronor and four won 10,000 each. Average speed on the stretch fell from 32 km/h before the trial to 25 km/h during it — a 22% drop, measured in a real school zone with no additional enforcement.

The trial was a proof of concept, not a policy: prize money came from Volkswagen's campaign budget, not from fines as the original idea proposed. In 2011 the lottery was tested in five more Swedish cities, then discontinued. Richardson later told AAP FactCheck the experiment probably ended because moving the rig to keep the novelty fresh cost too much.