If you want to reduce speeding, there are more cunning tactics than just handing out tickets. Here are what Jalopnik readers picked as the ten sneakiest, most effective, cleverest ways of getting drivers to slow down.
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Photo Credit: Reddit
10.) Faking a speed camera
Suggested By: sngd
Why it's sharp: Portuguese Jalopnik reader sngd alerts us of a homebrew kind of speed camera that doesn't cost anyone any money, but still works like a charm.
In Portugal we have a comedian called "Nilton", which I didn't like until I saw some youtube clips of what he does for fun.
And this is one of those things he does for fun: So he goes to a road which has a fixed speed camera. He stays 500 meters (550 yards) ahead of the speed camera and he flashes the guys who are speeding with a camera flash.
He does this for fun (say, "yeah... I just ruined your weekend"), but the truth is that they all slow down afterwards and for one or two months they think they are going to get a ticket.. I bet they do slow down.
9.) "Your speed" signs
Suggested By: Defender90
Why it's sharp: The great thing about these radar-controlled "your speed" signs is that for most drivers, they just alert you of your indiscretion and you slow down, feeling a little embarrassed. For the rest of us, they give you a chance to get a high score.
They're simple, they're effective at calming traffic, and they even let you know how inaccurate your speedometer is.
Photo Credit: Mike Mahaffie
8.) Chicanes
Suggested By: marimvibe
Why it's sharp: This little example comes from Newton Township, a suburb of Philadelphia. City planners tried to calm the road with a kind of obstacle, and it looks like it works at getting drivers to go more slowly. The town's drivers absolutely loathed it, but it worked.
The other opportunity chicanes provide, for those of us who like to enjoy our driving, is that we get a little bit of a low-speed racetrack tacked onto our usual way home. Nothing like a little hooning to wake up the morning commute, eh?
7.) The invisible rope trick
Suggested By: McMike
Why it's sharp: The invisible rope trick is when two guys stand on either side of a road and pretend to be holding a rope between them. Though you do risk a severe pummeling from pissed off drivers, cars do slow right the hell down.
6.) VW speed lottery
Suggested By: Gamecat235
Why it's sharp: The idea is simple. All the money you get from speeding tickets goes into a lottery. Everyone who obeys the limit gets entered for a chance to win that money. Brilliant! Reward good behavior and punish the bad.
It turns road safety into something of a game, which is about twenty thousand times better than the ever-present cop cruisers that wait to give people tickets.
5.) Strategically parked empty Crown Vic
Suggested By: mipakr
Why it's sharp: The sight of a Crown Vic just gets people to stop speeding. No matter what paint job it has, or how it's parked, if you see a Crown Victoria, there's a little trigger in your brain that makes you think "cop". You just slow down.
So you can just cut the actual police out of the equation. Just park a cop-car lookalike in a driveway facing the road and the ingrained reactions of every driver out there will do the rest.
Photo Credit: Kate Sumbler
4.) Solar-powered fake cop lights
Suggested By: Nate with shorter name
Why it's sharp: During the day this solar-powered setup down near San Louis Obispo, CA doesn't look like much, but during the night it lights up blue and white and looks very much like a cop car.
No one speeding on this rural road is the wiser, and it gets people to slow down cheaply and effectively without having to actually put an officer out at the road.
Photo Credit: Google Maps
3.) Hologram children
Suggested By: TheSlurpeeMan
Why it's sharp: This is a great way of bringing costs down for a municipality that's trying to cut speed. Very little gets people to slow down like a kid in the road, and rather than employ a round the clock ten year old, you can just fool motorists into slowing down with a hologram like this.
2.) Haunt the road with ghosts
Suggested By: ThatDamnDrunk
Why it's sharp: I'm going to let Trinidanian reader ThatDamnDrunk explain this one, as it's just brilliant. It might not work everywhere, but it is an amazingly unconventional way of effectively slowing traffic on a dangerous part of the road.
There is a (mostly) three lane highway which connects the North of the island to the south, its mostly straight except for a few curves here and there. There are many bumps, dips, and potholes along the road; plainly there are just many badly paved patches of road. And even though there is a speed limit of 80km/h, it is not enforced; I've never heard of anyone being ticketed for speeding and I know of persons who do twice that speed on a daily basis on our highways. Now along this particular highway, there is a specific stretch after an area called Claxton Bay (the overpass if anyone knows it) which first goes downhill then comes to a small corner/bend (which you can take at great speed). There have been numerous accidents however; it can logically be blamed on small depressions on the corner, bad paving, and crosswinds. But unfortunately people still speed (and some are lost in the process).
How'd some of the speeding stop? Most of the deaths are actually blamed on a ghost which haunts that specific stretch of highway. Doing 160km/h? There's a little girl in your backseat here to kill you. And that's how everyone says everyone dies at that part of the highway. Even though I don't know if its true or not, I still slow the f*** down.
Photo Credit: Alex_Ro
1.) Put naked women at the side of the road
Suggested By: Gamecat235
Why it's sharp: If you really want traffic to slow down, for better or for worse, you'd have a hard time outdoing naked women holding up speed limit signs at the side of the road.
Of course, this campaign never actually happened; the most you'll ever see of the Speedbandits is this viral video made in 2006 by the Danish Council for Traffic Safety.
Since this is a family website, the above video is censored but still slightly NSFW. You're not going to see anything in the above video you wouldn't show to you mother, but there are certainly going to be more liberated individuals in the comments section who can provide the fully NSFW version of this video.