By Linda Felaco
I'll admit I was skeptical at first about the "Drive Like Your Kids Live Here" signs. But there is reason to believe they work, or else why do we have traffic signs in the first place?
Then again, it turns out that mothers are often distracted drivers—with their own kids in the car, no less. Is a sign admonishing them to drive like their kids live here going to change their behavior when they're already multitasking while driving with their kids in the back seat? Maybe adding one more sign to the distractions is not the way to go. I'd be interested to learn what effect the signs have had here in Charlestown.
But the DLYKLH signs wouldn't really work on Route 1, so now we're back to the red-light cameras. As a general rule, people will behave better when they think they're being watched than when they believe themselves to be unobserved. For instance, anyone who's worked in an office with a shared refrigerator knows that there's always someone who's not above stealing their co-workers' lunches when they're not looking. In 2006, a study in Biology Letters found that merely creating the perception of being watched by placing a picture of a pair of eyes above the office coffeemaker increased contributions to the coffee fund. Even being "watched" by a robot has an effect: In another study, reported in Human Nature, people donated more money when a bug-eyed robot called Kismet was watching them. We decided to try posting a picture of a pair of eyes in the lunch room at my office, and it did seem to cut down on thefts from the refrigerator—until someone, probably the lunch thief, took down the picture.
So why wouldn't the same principle work to promote traffic safety? At least one CCA commenter thinks we already have red-light cameras in town. Why not put up dummy cameras? If you see a sign telling you traffic cameras are in use, are you really going to run that red light to find out whether it's for real?