There are plenty of good reasons to avoid driving too fast. You’ll likely face a fine or even jail time if you get caught. Speed is a well-known contributor to traffic fatalities. And if your vehicle runs on gas, you’ll burn more of it if you’ve got a lead foot. That costs more money. But more important: It produces more tailpipe emissions — especially the CO2 that contributes to climate change.
Recommended Videos To be clear, this is a publicity stunt. St1 has no way of actually modifying your in-car music listening if you use Spotify, Apple Music, or satellite/terrestrial radio stations. Instead, the company has created its own music playback service it calls Sound Driving. And it’s not even a full-fledged music streaming service — it’s literally a single playlist powered by Epidemic Sound that you access via a website.
Technically, nudges — a term popularized by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book, Nudge — are meant to be a form of choice architecture, where the desired choice you want someone to make is presented as the more convenient or desirable option. It’s not supposed to be a form of punishment for undesirable behavior.
An St1 spokesperson says the company hopes to expand beyond Sound Driving’s single playlist: “We will approach bigger music services with this idea so, hopefully, we may get bigger collaborations in the future.”