With dangerous overtaking decided to slow down
[ad_1]
The State Duma rejected a government bill imposing a fine of 5,000 rubles. for dangerous driving. In the first reading, the amendments were adopted in 2017, but five years later, the deputies came to the conclusion that the very term “dangerous driving” contains many “uncertainties”. Taking into account the need for a “complex processing”, the parliamentarians decided to remove the document from the agenda, but they did not abandon the very idea of imposing sanctions on aggressive motorists.
The government bill, adopted in the first reading in January 2017 and rejected yesterday, envisaged the inclusion in the Code of Administrative Offenses of a norm on a sanction of 5 thousand rubles. for “dangerous driving”. The term, introduced in the traffic rules in 2016, involves several minor violations in a row, such as abrupt changes in heavy traffic, unreasonable sudden braking and acceleration, failure to maintain a safe distance, and obstruction of overtaking. Separate sanctions have been established for all these maneuvers, but if they are combined, then the violation should be fined more severely, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the government explained.
After the first reading, the document lay in Parliament for four and a half years without movement. On April 18, 2023, the opinion of the Duma Committee on State Construction was published, in which it is proposed to reject the amendments, since their “complex processing” is required.
The term “dangerous driving” itself contains an “element of legal uncertainty” that may lead to “its broad interpretation in the consideration of cases of offenses,” the document says.
Note that experts warned about this back in 2016. The concept should be revised and disclosed in the Code of Administrative Offenses, the conclusion says. The deputies also considered it wrong to establish a fixed amount of the fine: the size of the sanction should be determined by the court, taking into account the “personality of the guilty person, his property status”, as well as various circumstances.
There were also comments on the bill from the presidential administration, Deputy Alexander Teterdinko said yesterday in the State Duma. Federal departments, he said, could not agree on the clarification of the term in the SDA. The current version of the bill tied to it, according to him, will give “excessive discretion to law enforcement agencies – innocent citizens will begin to suffer.” The deputy head of the LDPR faction in the State Duma, Yaroslav Nilov, objected to the rejection.
“There is a concept, but there is no responsibility; as a result, those who play checkers on the road, drive aggressively, go unpunished,” he said. “The government needed to clarify the criteria.” Mr. Nilov promised to introduce a new bill to the parliament with a “differentiated” system of responsibility for dangerous driving and mandatory photo and video recording of maneuvers. Oleksandr Teterdinko agreed, proposing to “work through” the document and submit it to the parliament again.
“The decision to reject the amendments is absolutely correct,” adds Sergei Radko, lawyer for the Freedom of Choice movement. “The current concept of “dangerous driving” includes a lot of vague and vague formulations that allow for a very broad and ambiguous interpretation in practice. The issue of punishment can be considered only after a serious revision of the wording.”
For example, 200 fines issued in a short period for various violations can be equated to dangerous driving, says Piotr Shkumatov, coordinator of the Blue Buckets movement: “What was proposed in 2016 is almost impossible to record and administer.”
“We have repeatedly discussed the issue of the uncertainty of the interpretation of the term “Dangerous driving,” told Kommersant at the Moscow Traffic Management Center. “In addition, for automatic fixation, it is necessary to develop criteria, methods and digital expressions that will help cameras determine the sign of a violation in the actions of the driver . Of course, drivers who provoke dangerous situations on the roads and risk the lives of others should be held accountable. However, both the rules and mechanisms for sentencing should be clear and transparent. If necessary, the specialists of the Center are ready to share their expertise with the legislative authorities.”
Recall that in January 2023, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, during a meeting with the head of the government apparatus, Dmitry Grigorenko, said that there were 95 bills in parliament that had not been moved for more than a year. Mr. Volodin asked the White House to “deal” with these documents. The Cabinet of Ministers with the wording “loss of relevance” withdrew part of the submitted bills. In April, as reported “b”, according to this scheme, the amendments of 2017 on the introduction of a deposit for the car (it was planned to oblige drunk drivers to pay 30 thousand rubles for the return of the car from the impound lot), as well as the amendments of 2016 on the deprivation of the rights of drivers who systematically commit gross violations (it was compared with Soviet scoring system of the traffic police). All of these bills (including the one rejected yesterday) were previously part of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s “action plan aimed at reducing the death rate from traffic accidents.”
[ad_2]
Source link