The use of behavioural sciences to ensure that people seeking to drive without prior training refrain from obtaining their license. The cost of the intervention was low and the benefits, in terms of road safety, are considerable.
Before, the approach to improve road safety was to implement mandatory tests focused on learning rules (not on rising awareness about the importance of safety), without considering the creation of courses open to every citizen. Today, Mexico City has the first open online courses and in-person 'sensibilisations' for traffic offenders. All these changes are a breakthrough to improve road safety.
Although, for now, there are practical driving courses, this is a first step and it is a way to make people self-select out of the group of those who receive a license. Each one is a person who became aware, even if they didn't delay the obtention of the license to a later moment (after they could get more information or training).

After being tested, this innovation is in the implementation phase in all the SEMOVI service offices, since February 2019. During January 2019, the pilot was implemented out in 8 offices (pilot and evaluation phases), obtaining favourable results.

This innovation was an internal project at SEMOVI. The areas involved internally were the General Direction of Licenses and Vehicle Transport Operation (implementation with public officials and citizens), the Executive Direction of Information and Communication Technologies (implementation of differentiated formats), the Executive Direction of Culture of Mobility (behavioural insights and experimental design), and the statistical analysis area at the Secretary’s Office (evaluation).

The users of this innovation are all the individuals who seek to obtain a license to drive a private vehicle in Mexico City. However, this project benefits all citizens of the city, since this change prevents untrained persons to obtain a license, thereby diminishing the probability that these people provoke a traffic accident. Also, the Government benefits from an easy to implement screening process to discriminate against unqualified drivers.

In eight SEMOVI service offices, the new license formats were implemented during January 2019. After, the effect of the implementation of the new format at pilot sites on the number of licenses issued throughout such period was measured. The analytical team used the Difference in Differences (DiD) technique: an analysis on licenses and permits issued from January 2017 to February 2019 (775 days). The days before and after the trial period (31 days) were considered.
The team found a reduction of 5.32 *new* licenses per day at the pilot sites with a statistically significant difference (95%), attributed to the implementation of the new format.
A standardization (775 days) of the number of licenses issued per week was performed, in which a decrease was found in the 4 weeks of the pilot test, in the same direction as the DiD coefficient, perhaps due to the fear of lying in an official document.
The effects were not significant for renewals, replacements or new permits for adolescents.

Despite the positive effects found, one of the biggest challenges that this innovation can face is the fact that people could lie or be unaware about their real abilities to drive.
In addition, it was found that the pilot only had a significant effect on people getting their license for the first time, not those renewing it (the effect was negative but not significant). This reassures the importance of creating courses for people with no experience driving so they are able to grasp the knowledge and practices necessary to drive safely around the city.

Still, this format prompts the need and acceptance for the course and test as a fundamental requirement to obtain a license even among those who will be affected by the measure (future drivers trying to get a new license).
It is important to note that this is only one of the steps in the process of building public policies to ensure greater road safety in the near future.

For the innovation to succeed, it is necessary that those involved, both the applicant and the public official, do their part. That is, that the applicant reads and signs every section in the format requested, and the public official also reads and writes on every section they need to. In addition, that senior managers, who are responsible for implementing innovations like this, take behavioral insights into account as a serious approach to design and implement public policies.

It has not been replicated yet. To do so, it is important to understand the context and motivations of those individuals potentially affected by the implementation of a similar form. The innovation can be used in every agency responsible to issue driver’s licenses, even those that already implement mandatory courses/tests, since the implementation of this format means no harm and can increase the levels of co-responsibility among the citizenship.

Using behavioural insights to shape public policies is an incredibly useful strategy since this helps to understand contexts and problems from an alternative perspective, placing individuals at the centre of the design process, and obtaining positive results with a minimum investment, without creating new opportunities for corruption (as it happens when some programs and bureaucratic processes are implemented with barriers that make it easier to pay for a process rather than actually going through it).