There’s nothing stopping us from combining positive and negative reinforcement. I think it would be a pretty easy sell to propose adding the random, small no-speeding rewards without removing the existing laws and fines.
Nothing except for large segments of the population that will revolt at the very idea. Politicians win by promising to be “tough on crime” regardless of the real result. People like to think most others are much, much worse humans; and they like to see them punished for it to reinforce their belief. Paying a drug addict to get clean won’t be popular, but paying people for driving “normally” won’t fare much better.
I agree, though, we would ideally keep some/most existing laws and fines while cutting back on the number of officer-hours to make the immediate costs balance.
Paying a drug addict to get clean isn’t rewarding good behavior so much as rewarding the cessation of bad behavior. This has clear problems. For one thing, it isn’t random like the “follow the speed limit for a chance at a small reward” scheme.
A true equivalent would be rewarding random people for not being on drugs, including the population of former addicts that have since gone clean. Being on drugs would be a garantee of not getting this reward.
There’s nothing stopping us from combining positive and negative reinforcement. I think it would be a pretty easy sell to propose adding the random, small no-speeding rewards without removing the existing laws and fines.
Nothing except for large segments of the population that will revolt at the very idea. Politicians win by promising to be “tough on crime” regardless of the real result. People like to think most others are much, much worse humans; and they like to see them punished for it to reinforce their belief. Paying a drug addict to get clean won’t be popular, but paying people for driving “normally” won’t fare much better.
I agree, though, we would ideally keep some/most existing laws and fines while cutting back on the number of officer-hours to make the immediate costs balance.
Paying a drug addict to get clean isn’t rewarding good behavior so much as rewarding the cessation of bad behavior. This has clear problems. For one thing, it isn’t random like the “follow the speed limit for a chance at a small reward” scheme.
A true equivalent would be rewarding random people for not being on drugs, including the population of former addicts that have since gone clean. Being on drugs would be a garantee of not getting this reward.