Highway consultant firm Atkins´ came up with a new kind of speeding-sign. A sign that , on top of showing you your speed and asking you to slow down, if your speeding that is, also shows you your licence plate number.

We've all seen them alongside the road and we might even have accelerated a little bit just to increase the number a bit, knowing you won't get a ticket anyway, but this might give the speeders a different kind of experience. According to autoexpress.co.uk “almost half of drivers breaking the limit slowed”. They don’t give any figures as to how many drivers slow down seeing a normal speeding-sign but I imagine it to be a lot less. They do say that "Trials have shown that drivers get the 'back-off' message quicker when they see their own registration shown below the speed limit". So it seems to be working at least a bit, i'm looking forward to seeing some statistics from these trials.

Showing your license plate makes it a much more personal experience. It’s like somebody says: “hey you, with license plate Y317MPU, you’re speeding! Slow down!”. It causes  people to feel more involved and might give them a feeling of shame towards other drivers.

If they take it a bit further they could link it to the registrations database and state your name while you’re speeding past but I guess that would cause some protests.