A series of horrific accidents has pushed road safety high on the political agenda, sending lawmakers and bureaucrats scrambling to suggest solutions, but experts said the reaction has been more about PR than improving the situation on the country’s dangerous highways.
Two prominent State Duma deputies from United Russia on Thursday called for another tightening of sanctions for motorists breaking the rules of the road and said they would submit a bill in the fall.
The chairman of the Duma’s Constitution and State Affairs Committee, Vladimir Pligin, and his first deputy, Alexander Moskalets, proposed a lifetime driving ban for motorists who are repeatedly convicted of serious violations, including speeding, drunk driving or running red lights, Vedomosti reported.
Pligin argued that last year’s changes — which included increasing the fine for not wearing a seat belt to 500 rubles (about $16) from 100 rubles — helped save “a few thousand lives.”
Meanwhile, an emergency meeting Thursday of regional leaders and transportation officials in the Public Chamber brought few tangible results.
Prominent pediatrician Leonid Roshal proposed introducing a special fleet of helicopters and airplanes to rush paramedics to the scene of accidents. Russia is the only member of the G8 that does not use helicopters to rescue accident victims, Roshal said.
Vyacheslav Lysakov, head of the Free Choice Motorists’ Movement, told the meeting that the country needed new, quality roads and a safety awareness campaign on state TV.
“We need a carrot-and-stick policy. … A 30-second clip about road safety will yield a result. There is no need to show naked women and beer,” Lysakov was quoted as saying by Interfax.
The country’s chief traffic policeman, Viktor Kiryanov, said it would be wrong to blame the police and that road safety policies initiated some years ago were heading in the right direction.
“I want a normal dialogue and not just accusations against us, so that together we can decide what must be done,” he said, Interfax reported.
The series of accidents has seemingly electrified the country’s leadership from the top.
Last week, two bus crashes in the Rostov and Novosibirsk regions killed 29 people and injured more than 40.
The news prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to call the situation on the country’s roads “monstrous.” Speaking at a Security Council meeting, Medvedev urged traffic police and other law enforcement agencies to work harder to bring order to the country’s chaotic roads.
Yet the accidents did not stop. On Monday, 11 people were killed in Dagestan when three Ladas piled up after a car sped into oncoming traffic.
Anatoly Kucherena, head of the Public Chamber’s commission on law enforcement oversight and judicial reform, said Tuesday that more than 200 people had died in car accidents just in the last three days. Official statistics put the figure at just over 300.
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev on Wednesday sought to reduce dangerous driving among the police by ordering all staff to re-pass driving tests within a month.
Sergei Kanayev, head of the Moscow branch of the Federation of Russian Car Owners, said any tightening of sanctions would only increase rampant corruption, however.
“This will not have the slightest positive effect,” he told The Moscow Times.
Kanayev said the deputies’ proposals were just a political game and that real improvement would come only from rooting out corruption and further restricting the use of migalki, the flashing blue lights popular with state officials to avoid traffic jams.
Yevgeny Gontmakher, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for Social Policy, said the proposals were a ploy to detract from the economic crisis.
“Everybody understands and will be in favor of improving road safety and increasing fines,” he said in an interview.
Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the Center of Current Politics, a think tank, said recent political actions would be short-lived. “We won’t hear much of this in a few weeks time,” he said.
Vinogradov argued that many of the attempts were futile as long as no serious reform of traffic police is initiated. The police, he said, are more interested in fines than in increasing safety for motorists and pedestrians.
“Such technical and administrative steps are no solution as long as corruption remains unsolved,” he said.
Last year, 29,936 people died in road accidents, or almost 83 per day. More than 270,000 were injured, according to official police statistics.
While nationwide, roughly 10 percent of accident victims died, the most dangerous place for drivers was Chechnya, which had a fatality rate of 30 percent last year.
A recent World Health Organization report, based on data for 2007, found that the death rate on Russian roads was 25.2 fatalities per 100,000, about double the U.S. rate of 13.9 and five times higher than in Britain, which has 5.4 and one of the best safety records in Europe.
The survey also found that an extremely high percentage of victims on the roads — 36 percent — are pedestrians. The share of pedestrian fatalities in the United States is only 11 percent.
Experts blame drivers’ widespread disrespect for even basic traffic safety rules, coupled with soaring vehicle ownership and poorly maintained roads and cars.
But despite the spate of multi-victim crashes, the safety statistics have actually improved somewhat this year. The number of road deaths was 10,277 in the first six months of 2009, 10 percent lower than last year. The number of injured fell 7.3 percent, and the number of accidents was down 6.6 percent, the traffic police said in a statement on its web site.
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