The authorities intend to return to fines for exceeding the average speed

The authorities intend to return fines for drivers exceeding the average speed – we are actually talking about measuring the travel time between two or more traffic cameras. This practice was abolished two years ago by the decision of the traffic police. The Ministry of Transport took into account the criticism and developed a draft amendment to the traffic rules, and is preparing appropriate changes to the Code of Administrative Offenses. It is necessary to solve, in particular, the problem with jurisdiction, when a section of the route is located on the territory of several regions, they say in the traffic police. Paradoxically, slow-moving vehicles can also suffer along with reckless drivers: driving on the motorway at a speed below 40 km / h is prohibited.

The draft amendments to the SDA, prepared by the Ministry of Transport, were considered yesterday at a meeting of the working group “Road Safety” as part of the “regulatory guillotine”. A new term “average vehicle speed” will appear in the rules: “A value equal to the ratio of the length of a road section with an established vehicle speed limit to the time spent by a vehicle to overcome this section.” Clause 10.1 of the SDA is being specified: the driver will be required to drive the car both at an instantaneous speed not exceeding the “set limit” and at an average speed without violating the imposed limits.

For exceeding the average speed, the traffic police punished drivers before, but stopped in 2021. The Supreme Court then noted that it was impossible to point to a section of road (rather than a specific place) as the place of the offense. Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin instructed the departments to resolve this gap by law. The discussion was held at various venues, including in the State Duma, where representatives of the regions (Moscow, Smolensk regions, Tatarstan) urged the return of average speed control as a means of reducing accidents. As a result, the Ministry of Transport decided to prepare amendments.

The method of fixing the average speed and issuing sanctions on this basis will be described in three documents, amendments to the traffic rules are just one of them, Anton Kozlov, deputy director of the state policy department in the field of road infrastructure of the Ministry of Transport, explained yesterday.

The Code of Administrative Offenses will regulate in detail the procedure for issuing fines. The government decree contains requirements for the installation of cameras, including those recording the average speed. There are no documents yet, Anton Kozlov published only a few details yesterday. For example, the place of the offense will be the zone of control of the last camera from the chain of devices involved in fixing. According to him, if the camera recorded the excess of the instantaneous and average speed at the same time, the fine should be issued for one violation.

Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reacted to the amendments with caution. The official position of the department has not changed since 2021 and boils down to the fact that until the “legal gaps” are eliminated, it is impossible to return the punishment for average speed. Senior Inspector for Special Assignments of the Department of Legal Regulation and External Cooperation of the Traffic Police Department Viktor Stelmakh said that the amendments do not resolve the issue of jurisdiction: the area controlled by the cameras can be located on the territory of several subjects. Also, it followed from his words, it was necessary to decide whether to punish slow-moving vehicles detected through the average speed control system: driving on the highway at a speed below 40 km / h is prohibited (a fine of 1 thousand rubles). The representative of the legal department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Alexander Ryzhov, believes that fixing the average speed should not exclude fixing the instantaneous. He cited a hypothetical situation as an example: a driver in a controlled area was driving at first in excess, then drove to a gas station, again drove onto the highway and again drove in excess, but the cameras would not detect exceeding the average speed. All these issues will be settled in the Code of Administrative Offenses, Anton Kozlov said.

Determining the average speed based on a mathematical formula is acceptable, but the introduction of the requirement “not to exceed the average speed in an indefinite area” into the traffic rules is meaningless, Grigory Shukhman, an expert on photo and video recording systems, believes.

“It is advisable to prescribe the composition of this offense, for example, in a note to Art. 12.9 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, indicating that the site of the violation is a section of the road on which the average speed is measured, and the time is the interval from entering it to exit, ”the expert believes.

Andrey Zaushitsyn, regional director of Stroy Invest Project (camera manufacturer), conceptually supports the control of average speed, but the problem, according to him, is that drivers do not have objective means of controlling it – they can only roughly calculate it, having basic knowledge of school course. Alexander Ivanov, a representative of the legal department of the TsODD of Moscow, supported the project of the Ministry of Transport, provided that the Code of Administrative Offenses specifies the place and time of the offense.

The term “average speed” should appear, its control too, it is important to work out in detail the changes in the Code of Administrative Offenses and the rules for the use of complexes, Yevgeny Litvin, co-chairman of the Road Safety working group, told Kommersant. The further fate of the amendments will be decided after the vote of experts, he explained, it is possible that the project will be sent for revision. The Ministry of Transport is ready to make adjustments based on the comments. Mr. Lytvyn believes that for the convenience of drivers and inspectors, changes in traffic rules should not be changed too often, it is better to do it in batches, collecting amendments into one document. In March, we recall, changes to the rules related to the regulation of SIM came into force, while the departments are already preparing several new changes in traffic rules, including those for average speed.

Ivan Buranov