Ukraine’s Patrol Police have a new weapon in the fight against dangerous driving in Ukraine.
Armed with new TruCam radar guns, the Patrol Police from Oct. 16 started fining drivers for breaking the 50 kilometers per hour speed limit, reads a message published on police website the same day.
Speed control patrols will focus on the parts of roads that have had the highest numbers of car accidents. Special road signs will warn drivers that their speed could be checked at these points.
“(Speeding drivers) can face a Hr 255 fine for going 20 kilometers over the limit, and a Hr 510 fine for going more than 50 kilometers over it,” Oleksiy Biloshytskiy, the deputy head of the Patrol Police Department, said in a statement published on Oct.16.
Speeding is the main cause of car accidents in Ukraine, Olesia Kholopik, the deputy director at Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM) and coordinator of the “For Safe Roads” campaign told the Kyiv Post on Oct. 16.
According to the official statistics published by the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, more than 1,230 people were killed and more than 12,800 injured in 68,000 car accidents across Ukraine in the first six months of 2018.
A recent accident with multiple victims occurred in September in the southern port city of Odesa: A 27-year-old man drove a BMW at high speed through a red traffic light and crashed into a grey Skoda, his car then ricocheting into a tram stop where people were waiting.
Two people died at the scene, and four injured people were taken to hospital, the press service of the National Police in Odesa reported on its website on Sept. 9.
“Lack of enforcement of speed limits on the roads tempts many drivers to go way over the speed limits. Some cause car accidents with a lot of victims, and that must be stopped,” Kholopik said.
The Patrol Police have been monitoring vehicle speeds with radars in a test regime since Oct. 8. Many drivers have already complained that the old and corrupt DAI (State Automobile Inspectorate, or traffic police) appear to have returned.
Officers of the DAI, which was disbanded in 2015, were known to hide in bushes with radar guns, and leap out to catch speeding drivers, demanding bribes to let them off.
Since the DAI was liquidated in 2015, speed limits have gone largely unenforced in Ukraine. Kholopik said there has been a rise in traffic accidents in recent years: in 2014 there were 153,000 car accidents recorded in Ukraine, while in 2017 there were 162,000.
Kholopik said the Patrol Police should show the public that they are quite different from the old traffic police.
“They will set up special signs and mark the speed control cars with blue signals, so as to be as visible as possible. No one will be hiding in the bushes,” Kholopik said.
However, the activist added, the fact that now the Patrol Police will be allowed to fine and take money from speeding drivers immediately could still prove a temptation for police officers.
“That is why they should film every driver they fine. And arrest those who offer bribes, immediately.”
