Driving badly in DC? You might get a warning text.

If you’re a driver piling up traffic tickets, some researchers believe that you’re at a higher risk of being involved in a serious crash. But if those traffic violations happened in DC, you might get a warning first.

The District is launching a study that will use predictive modeling to try to identify risky drivers, using data from DC’s traffic cameras and crash data. Some of those drivers will receive messages, possibly referencing their past traffic violations and including information about how likely they are to be involved in a future crash.

The study team will then compare results between drivers who received the messages and those who didn’t, to see if the messages lead to fewer violations and crashes in the future.

The pilot program is being run by the science team that runs out of the Mayor’s office, The Lab @ DC, in collaboration with the District Department of Transportation, the DC Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Metropolitan Police Department.

Messages will be sent by mail, text, or a combination of the two. Drivers who live outside the District are likely to receive the messages as well, but those details have yet to be set in stone.

“We’re still at an early stage of planning, so things could change,” said Nellie Moore, an operations analyst for The Lab @ DC.

Data privacy is being taken into consideration, according to the project’s web page. “We have strong protections in place to make sure all data are protected when it’s shared with us, when we use it, and how we dispose of it,” the page says. “We also remove names and other personal identifiers from the data we’re working with and report information about groups of people, not individuals.”

Traffic deaths are up this year in the District. According to police data, 35 people had been killed in traffic incidents in 2020 as of November 24 — that’s 46% more deaths than had happened at the same time last year.

The Lab @ DC study is part of DC’s Vision Zero program, which seeks to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries. The Lab did a similar experiment around littering in 2018, using signs placed on trash cans to try and change behaviors.

The pilot is in the design phase and scheduled to produce results by late 2022.