Without averaging: The State Duma rejected amendments on new fines for drivers

The State Duma rejected a bill providing for the introduction of fines for exceeding the average speed recorded by traffic cameras. The parliamentarians acknowledged that the amendments do not comply with other provisions of the Administrative Code, traffic regulations, as well as the position of the Supreme Court on this issue. Fixing the average speed entails difficulties in appealing such fines, lawyers say. The initiative is primarily due to the desire of the regions to replenish local budgets, experts say. The details are in the Izvestia article.

For discipline

The State Duma rejected amendments to the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, which provided for the introduction of new fines for traffic violations. Information about this has been published in the legislative support system of the Parliament. The bill proposed to resume the practice of issuing fines for exceeding the average speed recorded by traffic cameras. The penalties for this were planned to remain the same as for exceeding the "instant" speed: 750 rubles for violating the established limit of 20-40 km / h; 1.5-2.5 thousand rubles for exceeding 40-60 km / h, 3-3.5 thousand rubles for exceeding 60-80 km / h and 7.5 thousand rubles for exceeding more than at 80 km/h.

Average speed control is "one of the most effective measures to prevent and reduce accidents" and "disciplines vehicle owners, stabilizes traffic flow, ensuring its uniformity, thereby reducing key accident rates," the explanatory note to the bill says.

Excluding Administrative Code, traffic regulations and the Supreme Court

However, the deputies of the State Duma considered that these proposals are not consistent with other norms of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation and the requirements of traffic regulations. In particular, they do not comply with the principle of equality before the law.

"The uniform traffic order throughout the Russian Federation is established by the Rules of the Road. At the same time, the traffic regulations of the Russian Federation do not contain the concept of the average speed of a vehicle and the requirements for its compliance," says the conclusion to the draft law of the State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation.

The relevant committee also noted that the proposed norms do not take into account the position of the Supreme Court regarding fines for exceeding the average speed in terms of determining the time and place of commission of this offense. In particular, paragraph 26 of the resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 06/25/2019 No. 20 states that "the event of an administrative offense is characterized, among other things, by the place and time of its commission, materials generated by technical means operating in automatic mode must contain the specified information."

The State Duma recognizes that road traffic accidents "have become particularly acute in the last decade." The relevant committee of the Parliament emphasizes that one of the effective ways to form the legal awareness of road users is administrative responsibility. However, it will "effectively influence the behavior of road users only if it is applied lawfully, fairly, and in a timely manner," as well as "strictly following the requirements of the administrative procedure regulations of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation," the deputies note.

Where to appeal

The practice of previous years has shown that certain difficulties often arise with appealing a fine issued for exceeding the average speed, Sergei Radko, a lawyer for the Freedom of Choice movement, told Izvestia. This is due to the uncertainty of the location of the offense, he explained.

— The section of road where the average speed is measured can pass through the territory of several vessels at once. And since there is no understanding of exactly where the speed was exceeded, it is unclear which court should be appealed to for a fine," the lawyer noted.

According to him, it was these difficulties that became one of the reasons why several years ago the Supreme Court declared illegal the recording of average speed, and the State Traffic Inspectorate stopped issuing fines for it. The norms of the Administrative Code provide for the mandatory indication in the protocol on an administrative offense of the exact place and time of the offense, Sergei Radko said. In the case of a fine for exceeding the average speed, this requirement cannot be fulfilled: the time interval and the section of road where the excess was recorded were indicated in the procedural documents, he recalled.

— In addition to specifying the exact time and place of the violation in the protocol, there are other issues related to the recording of speeding. For example, what happens if a lower speed limit is imposed on the entire controlled section of the road? What should I do if the driver, having raced under one camera, did not get into the field of view of the second device, turning off the road? — Sergey Radko noted in a conversation with Izvestia.

Earlier, the official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Major General of Police Irina Volk, in her Telegram channel announced the fundamental disagreement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with fines for exceeding the average speed.

Taking care of the treasury

It is not surprising that the initiator of the rejected bill was one of the regional parliaments, said Maxim Kadakov, editor-in-chief of Za Rulem magazine.

— The regional authorities are trying to push through fines for average speed with enviable regularity. This is not so much a fight for road safety as an attempt to fill local budgets with additional revenue from fines," he told Izvestia.

The expert said that in some regions of the Russian Federation there are decent roads on which, for unknown reasons, speed limit signs are set at 70 and even 50 km/h. Against this background, the initiative to introduce fines for speeding looks exactly like an attempt to find a new source of income for the regional treasury, he believes. According to Maxim Kadakov, most likely, the regional authorities will not give up trying to impose such fines and similar legislative initiatives will regularly appear in the future.