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       When traditional road signs fail, designers are turning to ever more clever ways to subconsciously get drivers to slow down or pay attention.
       On a picturesque country road in the south of France, a creepy black figure suddenly appears out of nowhere. It is about the size of a grown man, but has no face, and a lightning strike seems to have split its head in two.
       Driving along this road with no cars, no street lights, no radar—just ancient plane trees on either side—I thought the figure was a strange joke. But then another one appeared. Then two more appeared: one adult, one who looked like a child. It suddenly dawned on me. The paper cutouts represented people who had died in car accidents on this road. The message got through: I slowed down.
       It’s a not-so-subtle example of a tactic in behavioural science known as nudging – techniques designed to get people to act or react in a certain way. Some nudging strategies are simple and obvious. Signs displaying speed limits, or reminding drivers to stop regularly, try to get drivers’ attention directly. Others are more subtle, such as “average speed” cameras. While conventional radars try to catch speeding drivers in one place, average speed cameras ticket drivers who drive too fast between points A and B. The nudging strategy works: after average speed cameras were installed along a 32-mile stretch of the A77 near Glasgow, Scotland, in 2005, road fatalities fell by 37%.
       There are also measures that go deeper into the subconscious. Some road construction sites use smiley signs to influence driver behaviour: at the start of the roadworks, the smiley is sad, but gradually becomes happier as it gets closer to the end of the construction site. The idea is to keep drivers alert and reduce their frustration when they have to adhere to lower speed limits. A similar smiley is also added under speed limit signs in the UK. They smile when they see vehicles driving below the speed limit, and frown when they see those driving above it.
       Some countries have significantly more dangerous roads than others. India accounts for 10% of all road deaths worldwide, with nearly 137,000 people killed in road accidents in 2011 alone. Although India’s first controlled-access highway, the six-lane Mumbai-Pune Expressway, is relatively less dangerous than the city’s congested streets, it has still caused more than 2,000 crashes and at least 500 deaths in the 12 years it has been in operation. “Nudges” are one way to address this problem. Mumbai-based behavioral science and design company Final Mile hopes to use “psychological cues” to get Indian drivers to slow down and be more careful behind the wheel.
       Ram Prasad, one of the company’s co-founders, said more than three-quarters of accidents are due to human error. Specifically, five aspects of human nature are at play: overconfidence; lack of concentration; cognitive biases about risk; lack of feedback; and lack of empathy – due to insufficient eye contact on highways.
       So, to slow down overconfident and inattentive drivers at India’s more than 13,000 open-air railway crossings, Final Mile has installed speed bumps that are positioned diagonally rather than perpendicular to the road. The car’s front wheels will go over the bumps one at a time rather than all at once, causing the car to sway from side to side. “Speed ​​bumps feel unusual,” says Prasad. “Drivers tend to slow down considerably and therefore pay more attention to oncoming trains.” On the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, these speed bumps are also painted with thicker yellow lines to make them appear taller. This can confuse drivers, forcing them to slow down before approaching a speed bump.
       Another strategy is to humanize the logo. Black silhouettes on roads in France and Canada are one example, while large posters in India show shocking photographs of men’s faces after car crashes. “It creates empathy,” Prasad said. “Instead of just saying ‘drive slower,’ we show what happens if you drive faster,” he said.
       On some UK roads, the familiar “Children Crossing” signs, which feature images of running children, have been replaced by life-size black silhouettes of children. Perle Guldberg Hansen, a behavioural scientist at the University of Southern Denmark and president of the Danish Nudge Network, believes it would be more effective if “the children on the signs said, ‘I live here’ or ‘I hope my dad gets home safe’.”
       This makes the consequences of reckless driving obvious and activates people’s awareness automatically and effortlessly, which is crucial, says Ivo Vlaev, an experimental psychologist at Imperial College London. It falls somewhere between the two extremes of reminding people to watch their speed and highlighting potential risks. “This is where we open the door to ‘nudges’, influencing perception,” Hansen added.
       Another way to exploit illusions is to use fake police officers to remind people of the power of the law. In Bangalore, life-size cardboard cutouts of khaki-colored police officers are used to persuade drivers to obey traffic rules. Similar tactics are also used in China, the United States, and some European countries. In the English city of Preston, drivers mistook life-size metal cutouts for real police officers and slammed on their brakes. Some cities have also placed life-size cardboard cutouts of police cars on road bridges.
       But not all nudges need to be so detailed, or even so realistic. Prasad said that jagged or sharp lines painted on the road can scare drivers into slowing down. The lines look cluttered, and drivers’ unfamiliarity with them causes them to slow down.
       The Chicago Transit Authority has once again succeeded in creating a simple optical illusion at a turn at a notorious crash site: Oak Street at Lake Shore Boulevard. The city tried just about everything: sharper lane markings, larger warning signs, and roadside lights. But it was all in vain; drivers were constantly being knocked out.
       Eventually, the department painted white lines on the road, with each line getting closer to the curve as the car approached. This perception of reduced distance can mislead drivers into thinking they are going faster than they actually are. One study found that in the six months after the white lines were first painted in September 2006, traffic accidents dropped 36 percent compared with the same period the previous year. Hansen believes it is one of the best psychological speed-reducing tricks.
       These measures are often more effective than road signs because, like most visual information, they work on a subconscious level with our brains. “When we see a road sign, if we see one at all — because we may have trained our brains to ignore them — we may wonder whether it applies to us or whether it is universally meaningful,” said Tom Vanderbilt, author of “Traffic.” The book looks at how “perceptual countermeasures” can improve road safety. “But when you’re driving down a very narrow street or passing a series of obstacles blocking your way, you’re unlikely to think about it and are more likely to just slow down reflexively,” he said.
       He added that this works much better than an optical illusion because the danger is that once you learn something is fake, you can quickly start to ignore it. “As with all experimental treatments, there is the problem of the recency effect, where drivers eventually revert to their previous behavior once they ‘solve’ the mystery,” Vanderbilt said.
       Seven years ago, a creative car suspension manufacturer in India put 3D stickers on the road that looked like artificial potholes. The initial goal was to convince drivers to buy the company’s suspension system by showing them that they could enjoy a smooth ride even on rough roads. However, the stickers actually urge speeding drivers to slow down.
       Similarly, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, road planners have mapped 3-D phantom speed bumps. However, as Hansen notes, “widespread deployment of fake speed bumps could eventually lead to dangerous driving behavior even on real speed bumps.”
       So how far could road safety enforcement go? Hansen thought further. For one thing, the dividing line could be removed, since “it subtly encourages people to speed up because it marks a ‘safe zone,’” he said. And why focus on roads anyway? Two red handprints could be printed on the steering wheel, visible only when the driver’s hands are not on the wheel, so that the driver could steer the car using both hands. “Psychologically, we prefer things to be in their place, and the steering wheel can serve the same function.”