Post-election surprise: Government postponed vehicle inspection reform to October 1

However, postponing the reform for several months does not solve the problem of Russian motorists. And that's why.

Sergey Lvov

“In the current situation, it is necessary to postpone the introduction of a new procedure for technical inspection until October 1. I would like to draw the attention of ministries and departments: we need to do everything to make the system work without failures from October 1, look again at the procedures and their technical implementation. There shouldn't be any inconveniences for citizens (emphasis added - ed.) There are millions of motorists in our country, everything must be done humanly. I ask you to submit the draft resolution on the postponement of the deadline for signing in the near future", - said Mikhail Mishustin.

The prime minister was clearly in a hurry about "no inconveniences". In the modern history of Russia, a car inspection (when it was actually carried out, and not on fake certificates) never took place without wild queues, bribes and loss of time and nerves for millions of motorists. Actually, for this reason - that is, the TOTAL impossibility to organize a business! - it was canceled. Roughly speaking, the number of cars that appeared as a result of mass motorization exceeded the capacity and throughput of the police inspection points by orders of magnitude.

Now technical control is carried out by "civil" services accredited by the Russian Union of Auto Insurers.

However, at least half of them do not want to fit into the new rules, according to which customers must have access to a toilet, the station must be connected to the UAIS TO system, and the control itself must pass through 80 positions, including at stands for checking brakes. lighting equipment, etc. For repairmen, these are high costs, which it is not clear how to beat off with tariffs for maintenance from the Federal Antimonopoly Service. By the way, the FAS has not presented any tariffs yet. And the amount of payment for maintenance is not known.

In any case, citizens who do not experience "any inconvenience" have already perceived any payment for maintenance as a new "tax on the poor". It is enough to look at the reviews and comments on automotive resources (for some reason they cannot do without a mat). Why the poor? Because wealthy citizens who change their cars every three years or even more often are exempted from going through MOT (cars up to 4 years old are beyond suspicion). And we have an absolute majority of poor car owners, with an average age of the car fleet of 13.4 years, or more than 40 million people.

Now let's imagine that a person, for some reason (illness, lack of business trip funds, age ...) did not have time to pass the checkup in time. He no longer has the right to go out on the road, and he can only get to the point by a tow truck.

Is this circumstance "convenience" or is it "inconvenience"?

But the question of where to go also matters. After all, the practice of online registrations in polyclinics, or for registration of cars in the traffic police shows that nowhere can be done without "live" queues. This means that the station that carries out the maintenance must have parking for at least several dozen cars. otherwise, you will either stand in the wrong place, earning fines from cameras, or nowhere.

In Moscow, for example, there are 325 accredited technical inspection stations. For 3 million 800 thousand cars...

But even if you are greeted with bread and salt and an open gate to check in to the post, the issue of payment will not go away. And here many Russians do not want to fork out for the "reform". Literally today it became known that over the past "coronavirus" year another 350 billion rubles. Russians owe money to resource supplying organizations. Including - 145 billion rubles. accounts for debts for heat, 62 billion rubles. - for electricity, 52 billion rubles. - for gas...

Against this background, the maintenance fee will be doubly hateful, because it will be impossible to "bypass" it, or transfer it "for later".

Of course, the authorities are well aware of the mood of the people on this score. It is no coincidence that the introduction of the new rules is scheduled for October 1 - AFTER the elections to the State Duma.

From the point of view of political strategists, this is the right decision. But life in the country will not stop after the parliamentary elections, while the economic situation in the form of an increase in personal incomes of citizens in the coming years does not bode well.

In these conditions, it would be correct to leave the vehicle inspection as it is now and not to flog the fever.

In the end, there is not a single statistically correct figure that would indicate that there is an increase in road accidents in Russia due to the poor condition of cars.

The main argument of the authorities is that it is necessary to check cars "as in Europe" and this is required from us by the Vienna Convention. And this is not true! The very same Convention requires mandatory technical inspection of trucks and buses, but personal cars remain at the discretion of the authorities.

Recall that the new procedure for passing the technical inspection in Russia was supposed to work from March 1, 2021. The inspection of the car was planned to be filmed with a video camera, and the pictures of the car were to be recorded in the Unified Automated Information System for Technical Inspection (UAIS TO). Also, the date and time of the beginning and end of the technical inspection, the place of its passage by coordinates will be entered into a single system.