Forcing people to clean streets in Chechnya contradicts global practice of road accident prevention

The threat to seize a car, and forcing drivers to clean streets is used nowhere in the world to improve road safety, Sergey Kanaev, the head of the "Russian Federation of Car Owners", has stated. In Chechnya, detained drivers often face violations of their rights, Ruslan Kutaev, a public activist, has noted.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that one of the bosses of the Kurchaloi ROVD (District Interior Division) demanded from his subordinates to take cars away from violators of traffic rules, and send drivers to clean streets.

The fight against violators of traffic rules should be conducted not by toughening the punishment, but by the inevitability thereof, Sergey Kanaev is sure. He treated as best experience the US practices, where the degree of danger from an intoxicated driver was established with account of the human's reaction after an 8-hour working day. Kanaev treats the car seizure as an inefficient measure.

Measures to prevent traffic violations applied in Chechnya go beyond the scope of legislation, which often leads to opposite results, said Ruslan Kutaev, the President of the Assembly of Caucasian Nations. According to his story, the share of violations related to drunk driving in the Chechen society is very small.

In her turn, Aset Malsagova, a Chechen human rights defender, believes that tough measures against drunk drivers are reasonable. "We, Caucasians, are hot people; and polite calls don't always work ... In such cases, a taken away car means primarily saved lives," she has explained.

Deprivation of a driver's license for drunk driving is often associated with a major violation of the law, Vitaliy Zubenko, a lawyer, has added.