Not all regions of the Russian Federation are ready for new strict requirements that may begin to be imposed on the traffic surveillance system from the beginning of the coming autumn.
The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation continues to work on the rules for installing photo-video recording systems for traffic violations. Now the department has already prepared the third version of the corresponding project. One of the most important proposed changes is the transfer of advisory technical requirements for cameras into the mandatory category. These include, among other things, measurement error standards and a certain format of photographs and recordings.
We are talking about a draft government decree, which should come into force on September 1, 2024, at the same time when the already adopted Federal Law No. 197 comes into force (it establishes general rules for violation detection systems, including permissible installation locations, as well as the approval procedure installation). The resolution should determine a number of technical details: for example, fix in the document the required distance from warning signs to the traffic camera.
As Kommersant reports, Russian regions are currently not ready for the new rules installation of traffic cameras. Their entry into force may lead to the fact that after September 1, some of the currently operating photo-video recording systems in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation will have to be turned off. This issue was discussed at a recent meeting of the Road Safety Working Group.
Thus, according to the deputy director of the Tula Avtodor State Public Institution Anna Sedova, now some of the mobile traffic cameras in the region do not meet the requirements of GOST, the standards of which are being prepared to move from advisory to mandatory. The fact is that these cameras are not able to create “collages” from photographs of the car of a traffic violator. The head of the Regional Navigation and Information Center of the Saratov Region, Evgeniy Ostroumov, spoke about similar problems. The Moscow data center also announced that it would be necessary to disable some of the complexes for recording traffic violations.
It should be noted that in the third version, the clause that proposed fining car owners for violating the speed limit, which was proposed by dynamic boards installed along the highways, disappeared from the project. Let us remind you that most often they urge drivers to reduce speed during bad weather — rain, snowfall, sleet, fog, etc. True, most drivers perceive such restrictions as non-binding recommendations. The Ministry of Internal Affairs had previously opposed the initiative, but now it has disappeared from the document.
Even during the revision of the document, the Ministry of Transport decided to return a ban on the installation of traffic cameras that record instant speed, located at a distance closer than one kilometer from each other in populated areas and five kilometers outside the city. However, this ban will not apply if frequently installed cameras are required “to eliminate the source of accidents,” as well as if this is necessary by the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate.
According to the department’s statistics, at the end of 2023 there were a total of 25.2 thousand stationary, 3.1 thousand mobile and about 900 mobile cameras. They made it possible to impose over 220 million administrative fines based on the results of last year (+20% to the result of 2022). The Ministry of Transport's project regarding the requirements for cameras will be discussed this week.