The Supreme Court will check the legality of the rules for taking exams in the traffic police

The Supreme Court (SC) will check the legality of the Ministry of Internal Affairs regulations on passing exams for a driver’s license. The document obliges traffic police officers to record on video the process of checking the driving skills of applicants for a license, and after a month the recording can be erased. A resident of Vyshny Volochok who appealed to the Supreme Court believes that the regulations contradict the Code of Administrative Proceedings, which gives citizens three months to go to court if their rights are violated – the restriction established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs deprives citizens of the opportunity to check the validity of the actions of examiners before the statute of limitations expires. The police do not see any contradictions with the law and remind us of the existing option to extend the storage period for video recordings to a year.

The basis for the complaint to the Supreme Court, which the court will consider in December, is the case of Anastasia Kryukova. Ms. Kryukova tried four times to pass the practical driving test in the traffic police departments of Vyshny Volochok (Tver region) from May 2022 to February 2023. At various stages of testing driving skills, examiners recorded errors and gave a “failed” resolution. The defense of Anastasia Kryukova appealed the decision of the traffic police in the Vyshnevolotsky interdistrict court of the Tver region, pointing out violations of procedures during the exam. The traffic police provided evidence of the absence of violations, the claim was rejected. After this, Anastasia Kryukova appealed to the Supreme Court, where she decided to appeal the police regulations on taking exams (Ministry of Internal Affairs order No. 80).

According to the current rules, the process of passing the practical part of the exam is recorded on video from cameras installed in the car. At the same time, the frame must show the road situation, the interior of the vehicle, control devices, etc. The video, according to the regulations, must be stored for at least a month, then it can be destroyed. This is what happened with the recordings of Anastasia Kryukova’s exams – at the time the traffic police claim was considered, the video had already been erased, as stated in the case materials. This did not allow us to obtain additional evidence of violations committed during the exam, the plaintiff’s lawyer Lyudmila Kryukova explained to Kommersant.

The standard established by the regulations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ms. Kryukova believes, contradicts Art. 219 of the Code of Administrative Proceedings (CAS), according to which an administrative claim can be filed with the court within three months from the day the citizen became aware of a violation of his rights, freedoms and interests. The one-month storage period for the video, Ms. Kryukova believes, deprives her of the right to check the “objectivity and validity” of the actions of the traffic police by studying video and audio recordings from the examination machine before the expiration of the statute of limitations.

The current regulations do not contradict the CAS, as stated in the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ objections to the claim (“Kommersant has read the text”). The document establishes a “minimum” period of time for storing video, but it can be longer if the “technical capabilities” of a particular traffic police department allow it. In addition, the police note, if Anastasia Kryukova had gone not to court, but with an official complaint to the traffic police (it is considered by a special commission), then the storage period for the video would automatically be extended to one year – this is provided for by the current regulations. The reference to CAS in this context is generally erroneous, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs: this document does not regulate the procedures for passing exams in the traffic police.

A month is enough to decide whether to file a complaint against the examiner’s actions, says Alexander Lytkin, chief expert of the National Expert Council for Driver Training and Testing, so the Supreme Court will most likely not uphold the claim. Videos from cameras take up a lot of space, he points out: traffic police departments, as a rule, do not have the resources to store large amounts of data for a long time, especially in large cities where exams are taken daily on several machines at once. At the same time, Mr. Lytkin notes, currently no regulatory document specifies the requirements for cameras; as a result, filming is often carried out on cheap, low-quality devices, and it can be difficult to see anything in the resulting videos, especially at dusk.

Ivan Buranov