About a decade ago, the internet lost its mind over street artists painting the sidewalk with scenes that looked 3D.

Now India's union minister of road transport and highways, Nitin Gadkari, wants to apply the same techniques to make roadways safer.

Gadkari's new plan wouldn't be anything complex like this sinkhole or this game of Pac-Man; rather, the images would be simpler designs of five or six blocks that would look like real barriers to oncoming speeders.

It would only be once the speeder slowed to within inches of the drawing that they'd realize the road was flat all along.

Beyond this mother-daughter team that painted virtual speed bumps on their own, Raghav Chandra, chairman for the National Highways Authority of India, says the country will try one or two pilot locations and go from there.

Critics say the main obstacle will be people knowing the bumps are fake once they travel over them the first time. At least in early tests, they seem to be working.

Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and India is a large contributor to the problem. The country has the most roadway fatalities in the world.

Past attempts to curb auto accidents have also involved creative paint jobs, including crosswalks that received a colorful zebra pattern.

Behavioral economics would suggest these techniques are a smart solution because they only require small amounts of money to change people's actions in major ways. A similar example involves the use of happy and sad faces to get people to stop speeding. Since people respond more to faces, not numbers, when they pass a frowny face at a high rate of speed, they tend to feel guiltier and slow down.

India's optical illusions seem to provide speeders with an even greater consequence — as far as they can see, at least.