who and how drove over drivers and pedestrians in 2023

Last year, rising road accidents made authorities nervous. It is difficult to trace a direct connection with the northwestern region, but indirectly the reasons are still due to the operation and the pernicious Western influence: closed borders in the west redirected cargo flows to the east and led to an increase in auto tourism within the country, increasing the load on the already suffering road network. New cars are being sold, but there are still a lot of old ones; Because of the sanctions, their owners have problems with spare parts and maintenance. Another headache of 2023 – the mass passion of citizens for kick sharing – is not related to sanctions at all and so far concerns only residents of megacities, but has already provoked a lot of problems and certainly no less discussions.

Previously, the accident rate in Russia decreased annually by 5–10%; not all countries could boast of such dynamics. In February 2023, the positive trend changed to negative and continues to this day: following the results of 11 months, the number of road accidents increased by 4.6%, deaths – by 2.7%. The authorities, of course, became nervous, because there is a presidential order to reduce the number of deaths on the roads. Social risk (the number of deaths per 100 thousand population) should be reduced to 4 by 2030; according to the results of the past, it decreased from 10.2 to 9.66, but is now growing again.

The unpleasant trend is associated with the closure of borders – the load on the roads has increased due to the redirection of cargo flows from west to east and a huge number of motor tourists. Avtodor is obviously happy about the latter, as its toll collections will increase by 25% by the end of the year. But for the main part of the 1.5 million km road network, in the face of growing traffic, there is no one to rejoice at.

It is clear that it is impossible to immediately exclude “road” causes, but you can deal with the consequences. Yes, there is a government plan for road construction, including repair, expansion and construction of new roads. It is gradually being implemented – the M-12 highway has already been completed, other roads are being built further, but this process is not fast. But there are no prerequisites for the fact that there will be fewer trucks and motor tourists next year, rather the opposite.

The government has already ordered the development of local operational plans to reduce accidents – for example, moving cameras to dangerous places.

It is difficult to talk about the effect; this has not yet been reflected in the statistics.

Experts expect the situation to worsen due to the aging of the vehicle fleet. Although sales of new cars will increase by the end of 2023 (most likely, they will exceed 1 million units), this is not enough, because there are more than 20 million passenger cars older than ten years in Russia. Many of their owners have already encountered difficulties in maintaining and purchasing spare parts associated with the introduced sanctions against the Russian Federation. All this does not add to a good mood: some experts directly speak about the accumulated psychological fatigue of the entire population and motorists in particular: due to incessant stress, they drive nervously, twitchily, and are distracted, which, obviously, also makes its contribution. It’s good if they don’t drink and drive, because alcohol consumption, according to statistics, has increased over the year.

For a combination of reasons, it can be assumed that the increase in accident rates will continue in 2024 – although, of course, no one can forbid hoping for a miracle, especially on New Year’s Eve.

Another process that citizens have watched with interest, and sometimes with irritation, this year is the avalanche-like spread of electric scooters in cities. At the end of the year, the kicksharing fleet reached 300 thousand units throughout Russia (estimated by the Micromobility Association). In absolute terms, the numbers are small, but the dynamics are frightening—a tenfold increase in three years. The army of kicksharing users over the same period has grown 24 times – from 1.5 million in 2020 to 36.5 million in 2023. At the same time, no one has counted private scooters and homemade courier electric bicycles and does not really know how many there are – perhaps another 300-500 thousand. All this variety often rushes without looking back and without reducing speed along sidewalks and pedestrian crossings that are not equipped for this. The number of incidents involving various SIMs, as they are called, has tripled over the year – children, women, pensioners are being run over, sometimes to death.

This year, special rules have been adopted, fines have been introduced, the traffic police are conducting raids, but this cannot be said to be of much help. Some manage to ride electric scooters along the Moscow Ring Road at speeds of 80–100 km/h. Experts say that SIM requires separate tracks, which is logical. Moscow is trying to make them – but the snow, for example, covers the fashionable markings, and electric bicycles continue to knead it with their wheels. In other cities there are no resources for separate tracks yet.

It is clear that SIM also has its advantages: high speed of courier delivery, ease of movement and, of course, the opportunity for businesses to make money on the popular service. However, the public demand to “do something about these scooters” is becoming louder. The authorities have already promised to increase fines, force SIM registration, etc. That is, at least intentions have been announced to do something about all this. But bureaucracy does not work as fast as an electric bicycle. For now, the big question is whether they will manage to do everything promised by the next season and whether it will be possible to walk on the sidewalks again without looking back and without jumping off from under the wheels of the next SIM connoisseur.