New punishment for speeders

In a move unprecedented in the Bay Area, the city's traffic engineers have created a traffic signal with attitude. It senses when a speeder is approaching and metes out swift punishment.

It doesn't write a ticket. It immediately turns from green to yellow to red.

Here is the full story, thanks to the ever-vigilant Geekpress.com.

My take: This will succeed in reducing speeding. By making the decision calculus more uni-dimensional (time vs. time, rather than time vs. speeding ticket), individiuals are more likely to see the folly of driving at unsafe speeds.

Here is a general introduction to framing effects. Here is a short article about framing effects in Alice in Wonderland. Here is Daniel Davies on how framing effects matter.

But what about civil liberties? One commentator opined: "It's depriving you of another one of your liberties -- going fast".

Addendum: Tim Worstall writes in:

"The anti speeder traffic light ?
Been around for years.
Here in Portugal they're all over the place.
And they work very well, just as advertised."