The governmental commission on safety security of traffic under direction of Vice-premier Alexander Zhukov at session on Wednesday approved the offer about introduction of the criminal liability for driving in a state of intoxication on a person who doesn’t have licenses or was deprived of them. It is planned to establish punishment in the form of the penalty from 100 up to 500 thousand roubles or at the rate of the salary or other income of the condemned for the period from one to three years.
It is obvious, that the decision was affected with recent tragedy in Ryazanwhen the drunk driver without licenses brought down to death six people and crippled one and a half tens cadets. As in the Russian proverb "a peasant needs thunder to cross himself and wonder".
Offers aiming to toughen criminal punishment for infringements of rules of traffic accomplished by a person in condition of intoxication and caused heavy harm to health or led to death of one or more people were approved. Besides the commission supported the offer on introduction of the criminal liability for the acts which entailed by inadvertency harm to the health of light or heavy degree. A package of legislative initiatives on strengthening of security of traffic will be introduced to the State Duma during next two weeks.
However punishment for driving under the influence of drink in the form of the penalty, about 20 thousand dollars, in today's Russiawill hardly stop someone. Fans to drink can be shared on two categories: those who have money and those who do not have them.
Those who have the money pay off inspectors of Traffic Patrol Duty on the place. Now a bribe to the inspector for drunk driving is - from 100 up to 500 dollars depending on his appetite and marks of the car. On "Lamborghini" one can pay even one thousand. After introduction of "draconian" penalties the size of the bribe will increase and that’s all.
Those who don’t have money and by virtue of some clear reasons will never have, don’t care of the size of the penalty. If there any difference not to pay 20 thousand or 20 million if one doesn’t have enough money for “klinskoe”? All the more to detain licenses which one doesn’t have inspector of Traffic Patrol Duty can’t and to detain the drunken driver without documents is not always possible.
Why the government does not have enough imagination for criminal punishment of the driver who, having got drunk, drives a car not having licenses? In fact this criminal offence is more dangerous than, for example, verberation near a beer stall: near a stall you will receive a shiner under the eye while on the road you’ll become the cripple or the dead man. Nevertheless, the drunken fighter will get penalty a term of one and a half or two years and the drunken driver – only big penalty.
The logic of the government can be understood only like this: representatives of "elite" from time to time also drive a car having drunk. And they in this case always will have something to pay off – at the outside not to the inspector but to the state. 20 thousand “greens” for the one from the elite is quite an acceptable sum…
