For a Road Trip in Mexico, Don’t Forget a Lonely Planet Guide and the 12 Different Traffic Regulations You’ll Have to Follow

By Eduardo Bohórquez and Rafael García — March 27, 2014.

Welcome to Mexico City. Grab your rental car and hit the road to start your two-week road trip. The itinerary suggested by Lonely Planet is amazing: 10 cities in 15 days. Each one of them is no more than a 4-hours drive from the other. What you may not be aware of is that following that itinerary by car requires complying with up to 12 different sets of traffic laws and regulations. A dozen legal instruments regulate your journey.

As a federation, regulating transit in Mexico is a responsibility of subnational governments: the Mexican states and Mexican municipalities. The Lonely Planet route takes you through six or more states; each one has its own state law and transit code. Moreover, some municipalities along the route also have their own transit code.

More than an annoyance for international travelers, this byzantine system of regulation creates regularly occurring corruption risks for Mexican citizens. In metropolitan areas, a daily routine can imply driving through two or three different municipalities: going downtown for work, picking up kids at school, or having a business dinner at a trendy neighborhood of the city. According to Transparencia Mexicana’s National Index on Corruption and Good Governance, avoiding getting a ticket for a transit violation is the most frequent act of corruption in the country.

Under the TESTING 1 2 3: Innovation Fund of Global Integrity, Transparencia Mexicana proposed to tackle this problem by analyzing the similarities and differences between transit codes in Mexican cities. Although we are still in the first stage of the project, we identified 18 different transit regulations governing just six metropolitan areas. Mexico has 59 metropolitan areas, covering almost 60% of the population. If the trend continues for each one of these areas, it could be estimated that a driver could potentially face 150 different ways of interacting with a police officer. That creates plenty of room for corruption and police extortion.

— Eduardo Bohórquez and Rafael García, Transparencia Mexicana

— Photo credit: Christian Campbell (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

For a Road Trip in Mexico, Don’t Forget a Lonely Planet Guide and the 12 Different Traffic Regulations You’ll Have to Follow

Related Posts