Editor’s note: ‘That time when’ is a new feature by the Kyiv Post which invites its readers to share their experiences of living in Ukraine.
That time when I was stopped by the infamous Ukrainian traffic police. The drive from Cherkassy to Kyiv was a frequent activity in my itinerary when I first moved to Ukraine 18 years ago. I recall such a drive on one hot summer day, probably around 1999, when I had patiently waited behind a slower moving vehicle for an opportunity to overtake it. As soon as the road markings allowed this maneuver, I overtook the vehicle, before immediately being flagged down by the ubiquitous traffic police hiding behind some trees up ahead.
I was accused of overtaking a vehicle by crossing some freshly painted road markings – and because apparently the paint was still wet, this was in clear violation of the traffic rules, and would require suitable retribution.
My approach then, as it is now, is to stick to my principles and argue, using my broken Russian, explaining that I had broken no rules, there were no signs that did not allow me to overtake, so there was no legal basis for this traffic stop. I was not naive, I knew the games they played and was not prepared to participate. But the police officer was not interested in my protestations.
Sitting next to me in the passenger seat was my translator, and when she noticed that my attempts of explaining the legal technicalities of the Ukrainian highway code were falling on deaf ears, she decided a different approach was needed.
At that time I was working for an NGO, distributing humanitarian aid around the Cherkassy region, and my translator’s line of argument was: “This British man has sacrificed so much to come to Ukraine and help us, he is doing so much good work for our country, you really should let him go so that he can keep helping our country’s poor starving orphans.”
To my relief, her argument worked wonders on the traffic police, who decided it wasn’t worth creating an international incident out of such an issue, and we were allowed to continue our journey without further incident. But to be honest, I was annoyed that her tactics worked better than mine.
