7 июля 2007 Года
July 7, 2007. STATE DUMA RAISES PENALTIES FOR TRAFFIC VIOLATIONS
 The State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, approved yesterday a series of changes to Chapter 12 of the Code on Administrative Violations, governing traffic rules. Fines for many types of violations will be raised in the approaching year, in some cases drastically. 304 deputies voted in favor of the changes; 109 voted against them.
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According to the new rules, the fine for driving through a red light will be increased by seven times: from the current 100 rubles to 700. For driving on a sidewalk (which is fairly common in many Russian cities) the fine will be increased by 20 times: from 200 rubles to 2000.
There will now be three cases in which a driver may face up to 15 days incarceration: if he is driving with a suspended or revoked license, if he is driving under the influence of alcohol either without a license or with one that has been suspended or revoked and if he doesn’t have a license and refuses to be medically examined (i.e. for Blood Alcohol Content). A new penalty is being introduced for being caught driving under the influence of alcohol a second time (repeated offense): three years’ license suspension.
At the same time the rules for leaving the scene of an accident will remain unchanged: violators will face arrest, license suspension and/or fines (pending a court decision). The only exceptions to this rule will be for pregnant women, women accompanying children under 14 years of age, minors under the age of 18, disabled persons and deputies of the State Duma. These categories of persons will not be arrested, but will only face potential fines.
The new rules also identify 12 types of car accidents for which the guilty party will be punished with several months’ license suspension. Among them are speeding by over 60 km/hour, driving in the opposing lane and causing an accident which inflicts physical harm upon other persons.
The smallest fine that drivers will face under the new rules will be 100 rubles, for speeding by 10-20 km/hour (300 rubles for speeding by 20-40 km/hour, and 1,000 to 1,5000 rubles for speeding by 40-60 km/hour). The largest will be 5,000 rubles, for driving without registered license plates.
A driver will face a fine of 200 rubles for failing to have his car’s technical abilities checked and certified on time. Those who are caught driving with unfastened seatbelts will have to pay 500 rubles, and those who are caught talking on their cell phones (without a “hands-free” device) while driving will have to pay 300 rubles.
Many deputies of the State Duma expressed hope that the stricter rules would help bring order to Russia’s roads. However Victor Pokhmelkin of the Just Russia party emphasized that the rules would only be effective if all drivers were treated as equals by traffic police and courts. “But this is not so today,” commented Pokhmelkin, “We have rich drivers and poor drivers; we have influential drivers and we have ordinary ones.” Pokhmelkin added that he believes his colleagues in the State Duma have done little to ease the differences between different categories of drivers who, in theory, should be equal under the law. He believes that the new rules will be applied selectively and, thus, will only worsen the inequalities already prevalent on Russian roads.
Victor Pokhmelkin’s second concern was with the establishment of a system of video cameras to catch traffic violators (already prevalent in many European countries). He expressed concern that drivers would now have a difficult time proving that they were not at the wheel of a car when a violation was made, which, he emphasized, would violate the presumption of innocence.
Finally his colleagues from the Just Russia party added that instead of raising fines for violations, the government should address the root problems of why accidents take place: a dilapidated transportation infrastructure and archaic methods of dealing with traffic flows and stoppages. Pokhmelkin added that, with the application of the new rules, the government is “placing the buggy in front of the horse.” Instead of punishing the minority of poor, aggressive drivers on Russia’s roads, the new rules will worsen the lives of the majority of law-abiding drivers who continue, unsuccessfully, to demand order in Russia’s government.
Pokhmelkin was joined in opposition to the new rules by his colleagues from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who emphasized that tougher fines would not bring order to Russia’s roads. “The main role of the traffic police will still not be to fight traffic jams and make traffic flows smoother, but to hide behind bushes and in alleyways and catch violators,” commented Victor Kuznetsov of the Communist Party. “Now they will be able to collect even more money from them,” he added.
Sergei Ivanov of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia also voiced criticism for the new rules: “suppose a police officer thought he saw a violation and decided that the driver may be drunk. The driver is in a hurry and doesn’t have time for a medical examination. Why should he spend 15 days in prison?” Ivanov also reminded his colleagues in the Duma that they could one day be affected by the new rules: “right now we enjoy immunity from the rules, but what if it is revoked at some point? What will we say then to a police officer?” Ivanov added that the “draconian” fines may be viable in Moscow (whose residents enjoy much higher average incomes that those of the rest of Russia), but are clearly too high for other areas. “Only in Moscow is the 1000-ruble note the most widely circulated one. In the provinces we still use 10-ruble notes,” he concluded.
Members of the United Russia party, which enjoys a constitutional majority in the Duma and is the primary supporter of the law, promised to consider the suggestions made by the opposition. However they emphasized that a new law governing traffic safety is also in the works.
Some of the changes to traffic fines will take effect immediately upon becoming law, while others will only come into force on January 1, 2008 and on July 1, 2008. However the new changes will first have to approved by Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, and be signed into law by the President.
Translated by Artem V. Zagorodnov
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