This license plate will not work for you – Kommersant

The Ministry of Transport proposed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to increase the punishment for driving vehicles with “hidden or modified” state license plates. This is necessary to tighten control over overloaded trucks, due to which the road surface is being destroyed, the department says. Participants in the freight transportation market supported the idea, but independent experts believe that the control will not work. Now for hidden numbers fined or deprived of rights. It is not known how the sanction will be strengthened, but it is possible that it will affect not only truck drivers, but also all other motorists.

The proposals of the Ministry of Transport are set out in the response of the department to the chairman of the Federation Council committee on economic policy, Andrey Kutepov. In March, the senator addressed the White House on transportation issues. Mr. Kutepov, in particular, pointed out that the destruction of Russian roads and bridges is due to the fact that overloaded trucks regularly go to them. The problem of transport, the owners of which exceed the permitted weight, has been discussed for more than a year. For control, the authorities are equipping automatic weight and dimensional control points with cameras (APVGK; there are more than 300 of them on the roads), but truck drivers evade responsibility, including hiding license plates, the senator writes. According to him, every tenth truck today travels with a violation of permissible loads. As an example, the senator cites the situation in the south of Russia, where overloaded trucks transport grain to ports with impunity.

In response to Andrey Kutepov, the Ministry of Transport (“Kommersant” got acquainted with the text) reports that the department has prepared a draft law on a unified information system, which will include all existing APVGK – this will “ensure continuous monitoring” of equipment. In addition, the ministry sent proposals to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to strengthen the responsibility for drivers driving vehicles without numbers or with hidden or “modified” numbers. Today, we recall, for this, by a court decision, they are fined 5 thousand rubles. or deprived of their rights for a period of up to three months. How exactly officials propose to tighten the sanction is still unknown.

It should be noted that from the response of the department it follows that the tightening will affect drivers of all vehicles, and not just trucks. The Ministry of Transport did not give an explanation on Tuesday. The traffic police, according to Kommersant, does not support the proposal of the Ministry of Transport.

The initiative looks “logical”, says Eduard Mironov, director of purchasing transport services at FM Logistic in Russia. Every spring and summer, he explains, seasonal restrictions on the movement of heavy trucks are introduced on the roads.

This, in turn, leads to a reduction in the “turnover” of transport and an increase in downtime – as a result, a number of carriers are tempted to load trucks “under the roof” with an overweight in order to carry more cargo at a time. Increasing responsibility will increase the effectiveness of control, agrees the general director of the transport company Delko Sanjar Ashuraliev. “The situation will certainly improve, as there are many unscrupulous carriers who literally cover up the license plate with mud and calmly pass the APVGK without any consequences,” he says.

Toughening the punishment will not solve the problem of overweight, Vladimir Matyatin, president of the Gruzavtotrans association, is sure, recalling that driving with hidden license plates is a violation that is drawn up by traffic police inspectors. “Carriers, as now, will pass weight and size control points with rags on their numbers, and “negotiate” with traffic cops about “fare,” the expert believes. “All these initiatives are senseless air shaking. For some reason, the Ministry of Transport does not want to look at the root of the problem: it is necessary to tighten the responsibility not for drivers, but for shippers and customers of transportation, in whose interests cars are loaded with an excess.

Andrey Kutepov also suggested that the government equip all trucks with license plates with RFID radar tags that cannot be hidden from cameras. The idea of ​​numbers with radio tags, we recall, was discussed ten years ago at the suggestion of the then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, but the discussion did not end with anything. “The use of radio frequency identification modules will be accompanied by an increase in the costs of budgets of various levels for the means of interaction with such modules, and will also lead to an increase in the cost of vehicles or their registration,” the Ministry of Transport believes. “This technology also has a low degree of protection from radio signal jammers that can be used unscrupulous participants in the movement.

Ivan Buranov