Although the right not to grow – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

From October 1, motorists will have access to electronic driver’s licenses – the new service will work on the basis of the State Services Auto mobile application. The ID in the QR code format can be shown to the inspector of the road patrol service. Electronic rights, specified in the traffic police, as well as the previously introduced electronic certificate of registration, while they function only as part of the experiment. The inspectors are already ready for it, but, according to the traffic rules, the driver must still carry paper documents with him. The amendments necessary for the legalization of electronic rights and STS are still in the government.

Mikhail Chernikov, head of the traffic police of Russia, announced the launch of the new service: “From October 1 of this year, we plan to launch a service upon presentation of a certificate in the State Services Auto mobile application.” The transition to digital driver’s documents, we recall, began with electronic OSAGO in 2017. In September 2021, the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the traffic police launched the Auto State Services application, which generates a QR code for a vehicle registration certificate (STS) that can be shown to traffic police inspectors when checking documents.

Since its launch, according to the Ministry of Digital Development, the program has been downloaded more than 1.6 million times.

On the basis of the application, there are also services for electronic contracts for the sale of cars, registration of an accident without an inspector, checking the history of the car and appealing fines.

The current traffic rules, we note, do not contain a mention of QR codes, obliging drivers to carry and present to the traffic police officers a driver’s license and the original STS. Their absence is fraught with a fine under Art. 12.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses in 500 rubles. Explanations were sent to traffic police officers that a QR code is equal to full-fledged documents, Mikhail Chernikov said in June, but their full legalization will occur after amendments to the traffic rules. They have already been prepared and submitted to the government: the necessary norms are included in a large package of changes from the Ministry of Transport, about which “Kommersant” repeatedly said.

The Ministry of Digital Development did not respond to Kommersant’s request.

There are few drivers who forget their rights at home, and the fine imposed for this violation is small, draws the attention of the retired traffic police captain, the founder of the public project “Overheard from the traffic police” Valentin Ilyinov.

“Electronic rights are more convenient, but this gives rise to a whole range of new problems,” he believes. “It is not easy for the inspector to check the authenticity of the presented QR code and the application itself, especially in an area where there is no Internet, and even by radio it is impossible to contact the nearest post. There are a lot of such territories in Russia.” This is confirmed by the coordinator of the “Blue Buckets” movement Petr Shkumatov (since June he has been traveling around Russia, traveled more than 24 thousand km).

“For all the time, communication was in half of the places, the Internet – in 20%, mostly near settlements,” says Mr. Shkumatov. “After Omsk, the mobile network is generally an extremely episodic phenomenon. I hope that the emergence of electronic rights will force the state and mobile operators to establish stable communications, at least along the federal road network.”

The traffic police are aware of this problem: Mikhail Chernikov said that “all the necessary work is being done to make the service available to drivers across the country, including offline.” On the road, a situation may also arise when the driver’s phone suddenly dies, and there is nowhere to recharge, adds Valentin Ilyinov – it turns out that the motorist is driving without a license.

In the AppStore, the State Services Auto application has mostly positive reviews, but there are citizens who do not like the software. For example, on September 11, one of the users wrote that the traffic police near Moscow refuse to accept electronic STS. Another citizen wrote that he suddenly lost data in the application at the moment when he had to show the QR code to the inspector. Note that the public services portal itself and related services regularly “hang” – this phenomenon, for example, was observed yesterday in the morning.

Ivan Buranov