Involuntarily violators - high-speed on metropolitan roads provokes fines

Baku / 07.06.18 / Turan: Against the backdrop of the rapid pace of road construction in Azerbaijan, any driver can be fined for speeding. Such a situation arose in connection with the unreasonable a high-speed regime on new routes, experts believe. It is noteworthy that 52.5% of recorded violations last year were associated with exceeding the speed limit, the State Statistical Committee (SSC) reported. Total amount of fines applied was 73.7 million manat (in 2016 - 85.4 million manat). In January 2018, 33.1% of the protocols were compiled due to the excess of the set speed.

New roads with speed limits established here caused a headache for drivers, head of SIPAR human rights organization, Fazil Mammadov, told Turan. "The abruptly varying speed schedule provokes drivers for violations, mainly related to exceeding the permitted speed. In this regard, the number of fines and appeals to our organization is growing," the human rights activist said. It turns out that often and dramatically changing speed regimes as if specifically provoke drivers for violations. The scale of the current situation is easy to assess, because in the past 10 years, the opening and laying of the foundation of 165 highways and road structures took place. 207 new bridges were commissioned.

Paying tribute to the quality and quantity of the built roads (recently Azerbaijan once again became the leader in the quality of roads among the CIS countries, having placed on the 36th place of the Global Competitiveness Index 2017-2018, earning 4.8 points, which is much higher than the average), a specialist draws attention to the obstacles for drivers to drastically change the permissible speed on new routes. The sharpness of the situation is added by the fact that fines for violations, according to the new version of the Code of Administrative Offenses, have significantly increased.

At the moment, the excess of the speed of 10-20 km/h set on the road from the offender is levied a fine of 10 manats, a penalty of AZN 50 is stipulated for 21-40 km/h, 150 AZN for 41-60 km/h, more than 60 km/h - 250 manats. For comparison, before the amendments two years ago for the excess of the established speed by 10-30 km/h followed a penalty of 15-20 manats, 30-60 km/h - 20-40 manats, more than 60 km/h - 40-60 manats.

"It is not clear from how speed limits are introduced, since there are no adequate reasons for this. For example, the driver rides at a set speed of 60 km / h and suddenly after two kilometers the permitted speed reaches 90 km/h, having traveled a kilometer - again 60 km/h. And so on the entire stretch of the road," said the expert. From his words, it is practically impossible to observe such a regime and its drivers ignore it, massively replenishing the ranks of violators and increasing the amount of fines.

According to the human rights activist, the organization subordinate to him sent a written statement to the President's Office, the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor General's Office about a biased consideration of accidents involving pedestrians, as the relevant bodies and courts, in violation of the legislation and the Constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic, hasten to blame the driver in 98% of cases. On the motives of prejudice can be guessed. "The material advantages of the car owner are not grounds for accusing him of a traffic accident," Mammadov said. Meanwhile, the growing statistics of road accidents involving pedestrians exacerbated the problem.

According to statistics for June of this year, in the past year, there were 1,833 accidents that killed 750 people, 1719 people were injured. In 2013, 1,164 people died in auto accidents in Azerbaijan, 1,124 in 2014, 894 in 2015, and 759 in 2016. As a result of accidents in 2013, 2,948 people were injured, in 2014 - 2,676, in 2015 - 2,265, in 2016 - 2003 people. -0--