Mikhail Blinkin
Scientific director of the Research Institute of Transport and Public Road System

Gruesome fate of pedestrians in Russia

07 February 2012

The domestic statistics of motor vehicle collisions with pedestrians was always discouraging. Today it is getting even worse. This conclusion is especially visible against the background of progress Russia recently made in getting tangible improvement in all other indicators of the road traffic safety.

The pedestrian hit statistics has many causes; I will elaborate on the most obvious ones.

Mega-cities in developed countries feature road network that is divided into two fundamentally different contours. The first contour deals with the city streets, going through the usual urban development districts. This is purely pedestrian habitat; the pedestrians are ruling here along with public transportation vehicles and cyclists. In this area pedestrians go underground only to have a subway ride. The cars on these streets form the "oppressed class": they should follow the draconian speed limit here (50 or even 30-40 km/h), and the traffic lights are erected at every corner.

The second contour consists of highways which in US are referred to as freeways. These roads are always laid outside the development areas (traffic here is following overpasses and tunnels, in the railroad right-of-way, it is crossing the city via industrial zones, etc.). To enter these roads one has to use infrequent and specially developed intersections. There are no same level crossings, or T-junctions accessible directly from the local driveways.

Freeways belong solely to cars: speed is also kept under limits; however, these limits are pretty comfortable, let's say the limit can be set at 80 or even 100 miles an hour.

Of course, nowhere in the world this road metropolis network was built "overnight". The development of this road infrastructure was preceded by years or even decades of invested time and careful planning. At the same time every metropolis in the world followed the tangible strategy of the two-contour road networking.

The same principle of separate existence of pedestrians and motor vehicle traffic is usually observed not only in metropolitan areas, but also in other residential areas: highways (for example, the interstate highways) are rarely routed through city streets.

Under above conditions it is extremely difficult to hit a pedestrian on a city street - all cars here are moving very slowly. Even more difficult is to make a pedestrian suffer on the highway as only inadequate persons can ran across these roads.

Unfortunately, the Russian pedestrians and drivers coexist under fundamentally different conditions. The urban architecture is dominated by the Soviet-type hybrids, i.e. here we can see multi-lane highways and avenues that act as "almost freeways" and "almost streets”. Unfortunately, no other type of infrastructure is developed today even in the most prosperous cities in the country.

Almost always our main federal roads pass through the main streets of the cities and cross the roadside settlements. The outer belt roads around the cities are almost non-existent. Those that are currently developed usually operate as a "toll bypass" capable of taking only part of the city street transit traffic.

Under these conditions, the growing number of car owners in our cities and regions results in increasing the chance of close engagement between pedestrians and intensified road traffic. With all the sad consequences stemming from it.

I am not happy to make the following conclusion: the situation described is highly risky for pedestrians and is very uncomfortable for motorists. We have little chance of changing dramatically this situation in foreseeable future.

There are only trivial half-measures that we can deploy:

- Introduce strict speed limitations in developed areas where violations of speed limits occur on a regular basis;

- Set up underground and overpass road crossings which are highly inconvenient for the most vulnerable group of pedestrians;

- Set up "zebra" crossings; this crossing is effective in protecting pedestrians at a multi-laner road only if it is equipped with pedestrian traffic lights, otherwise it remains just another "striped animal" on the pavement provoking MVA;

- Promote the development of the new culture among pedestrians and drivers; in this behavioral domain everything stays at the level of inept second form pupil who remembers that the time had been spent on learning the lesson but the title of the discipline remains obscure.

Let us now leave factors of planning and move to the legal and behavioral aspect.

Our legislation remains especially archaic in the field of road safety. In particular, we still have not introduced the widely used international notion that distinguishes negligent, careless driving from dangerous driving. Meanwhile, the first type of driving should be penalized through administrative offense code, whereas the second offence (depending on the gravity of the consequences) should be subject to criminal court hearings and prosecution.

For example, obviously that a driver who hit a pedestrian on zebra crossing, or lost control of a car and drove into a crowd at a bus stop, was not following homicidal inclinations. However, the driver’s dangerous (aggressive!) driving was undoubtedly intentional. In fact, the driver’s behavior was pretty much similar to a casual (just kidding!) shooting at passers-by from the office window.

Therefore, in many countries around the world having high number of motor vehicles the motorist would have ended up in court facing charges against a very serious article in the Criminal Code, plus, of course, satisfaction of claims raised by the party injured and claims raised by insurance companies.

The prosecution in this case would never maintain that "the driver lost control": this term can be used to describe getting a bumper-denter when you pull your car into garage! No, in this case the defendant would have been convicted of premeditated crime consisting of dangerous driving. Needless to say that the court ruling would not be affected by the proprietary status of the defendant nor by his or her position in the company.

Now consider a typical case from domestic practice: driving city streets in a Porsche Cayenne with a speed of 200 km/h. According to generally accepted foreign practice – this is a classic example of dangerous driving, i.e. criminal behavior on the road. Applying our standards this is only an administrative offense that can bring about "imposing an administrative fine varying from two thousand to two thousand and five hundred rubles or revoking driving license over a period of four to six months".

The regular statistics of transport risks is monitored in the world practice for many years. It is expressed in the number of road fatalities for 100,000 of registered vehicles.

Using this indicator we stay somewhere midway between the Afro-Asian underdogs and leaders from the most developed countries. For the formers the risks is characterized by a figure of the order of 800-1000 due to the fact that human life is generally quite cheap in these countries and does not have a particular emotional coloring. For the leading countries the situation becomes quite troublesome when the risks grow to the order of 10. For these countries the norm should stay slightly «above zero».

Russia is balancing on the figure of 90, which means that every year  on the roads 100,000 cars kill as many as 90 of our fellow citizens, 30 pedestrians inclusive.

A professional approach to analysis of this tragic statistics requires avoiding references on road conditions, weather, nature, and the flaws in police performance and even on the ethnic mentality; at least, above considerations should be brought back.

The main factors determining the level of transport risk should involve the standards of behavior that are dominant in the country transportation system which – in their turn – depend on the quality of institutions first of all civil institutions and then - specialized transport institutions.

More than 100-year-long history of forming norms transport behavior generally accepted in civilized society yield some trivial recommendations: traffic rules are the same for all vehicles, they do not depend on the status of the vehicle owner, generally available benefits are provided based on the notion of public benefit meaning that emergency service vehicles have priorities and these priorities do not apply to VIP cars and VIP motorcades; there is not and should not be any "special royal passage" in route navigation and in modes of movement; the head of any rank inside any car is but a mere passenger, etc.

In purely quantitative terms, the percentage of fatalities associated with MVA involving VIP-cars and VIP-motorcades should be relatively small. At the same time it is generally recognized that the standards of conduct on the road are set forth by elite. If riding the "oncoming traffic lane" or "stepping on it" is acceptable to the governor or prosecutor, nobody can stop a happy owner of Porsche Cayenne, or even a simple tank truck driver from enjoying the same pleasure.

Finally, a few case studies.

In late 1960's Generalissimo Franco ordered his guards to stop his motorcade at the red traffic light. In the years that followed the transport behavior of both ordinary and the most distinguished Spaniards driving cars dramatically improved.

In early 1990’s, Prime Minister of Norway Mrs Gro Harlem Brundtland sent a request to Storting deputies to allow her using lanes allotted for public transport in case of urgent call to parliament. She got a refusal with advise to call a taxi should such situation develop.

In 2005, the French President Jacques Chirac visited Moscow to attend the ceremony of opening the monument to Charles de Gaulle. His car was hopelessly behind the motorcade of the hosting party, as the French VIP-driver was driving in his usual manner, that is, he was following effective the traffic rules.

In 2007 the Chief of traffic police of the city of Rome, General Catanzaro left his car near a restaurant at a parking slot marked "only for disabled". The picture of his Alfa Romeo was made by paparazzi and published in Italian newspapers. The scandal broke and the general had to resign.

In the same 2007 Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, who arrived to have a dinner with his daughter Princess Madeleine to one of Stockholm restaurants was fined for trespassing “No parking” sign.

At the international conference of 2010 on urban transport I was forced to swallow an acrid remark: "What do you want from your traffic police if you have a second assistant to the district attorney who has higher "Right-of-Way" than the King of Sweden, and the Chancellor of Germany put together!”

And finally, the last case we borrowed from the report compiled by UN experts on the safety status on African roads. A certain wealthy gentleman driving his Jeep Cherokee was negligent and drove right into the rural bus stop injuring several and killing one of the villagers. He escaped any punishment "because of amicable settlement among the parties" through setting up a memorial dinner for surviving residents of the local village.

Sounds familiar isn’t it?

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