Subway incentives to promote seat belt compliance

Joe Giglio and Charlie Chieppo had a nice piece, High-tech Highway Funding, in the Globe today on the need for broader and more strategic use of technology to improve transportation service and create an effective revenue stream for transportation needs.

Some people – not naming names – some people love this idea but worry that technology can be, well, misused, let’s put it that way, to, uhm, well, also reduce the ability to violate speed limits. Not that they are right. Again, I am not naming names, nope.

A similar issue arises with today’s announcement by state and local public safety officials and advocates about an impending seat belt law “enforcement blitz,” as the Statehouse News Service put it, which is to start tomorrow and conclude next Thursday.

See, the same (unmentioned) people chafe at seat belts. Childish, I know, but I really like the suggestion passed on by a colleague from Cornhusker country, who notes that

They used to, and probably still do this in Nebraska on certain days throughout the year with patrols set up around my high school. At the various stops, the officer would check to see if you were wearing your seatbelt, and if you were, you received a Subway sandwich coupon that was good for a year. Now if Mass offered that sort of performance compensation, more people might comply…

Maybe. Just maybe.