The car, which was not insured under CASCO, was damaged when it fell into a hole on the roadway. What are the actions of a motorist? Who is responsible for the condition of the road surface? Who and where to file a claim and how to properly compensate for damages from such an accident? Roads, as you know, are a sore subject for car owners. Poor condition of the road surface (potholes, pits), lack of properly provided road lighting are often the causes of vehicle damage.
Thus, according to data published on the Pravda.ru website, the number of accidents due to bad roads increased by twenty-two percent. According to traffic police statistics, over the ten months of 2013, the number of accidents in the Russian Federation that occurred due to road conditions that did not meet current standards increased by 21.7 percent.
According to statistics from the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, twenty percent of road accidents occur due to the condition of streets and road surfaces not meeting legal requirements. The number of accidents of this category in 2012 was 42,772; in 5 months of 2013, 20,016 such accidents occurred.
Fortunately, the mechanisms of the current legislation provide for the possibility of obtaining (collecting) compensation for damage caused to a vehicle due to the unsatisfactory condition of roads, including in the absence of CASCO insurance.
Who is responsible for the condition of the roads?
Any road belongs to someone, and the owner is responsible for its condition. In the city, this is municipal property, so the city authorities are responsible for repairs. The road near the shopping center is most likely under the control of its owner, so the administration must patch it up. In the yard Explanation of the Main Traffic Safety Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia that the entrances to residential buildings are under the jurisdiction of the State Traffic Inspectorate - this is the local area or municipal property. Depending on the owner, either the management company, the HOA, or the city authorities must repair these areas.
It doesn't matter who owns the road. The main thing is that any road can be repaired.
Statement
An application with a request to repair the local area, access roads and sidewalks in the yard is submitted to the management of the Management Company, which under the contract maintains the house. At least half of the apartment owners must sign such a statement.
It must be registered and provided with the number of incoming documents. One copy of such a petition is kept by the applicants:
- The letter indicates the name of the management company, information about the manager to whom the application is sent, information about the applicant, and his address.
- The reasons why repairs are required are indicated, and the technical condition of the yard, roads, and sidewalks is described.
- A set of works is listed that, in the opinion of residents, need to be performed for the high-quality improvement of the local area and the creation of safe conditions for its use.
- The application must be accompanied by an inspection and inspection report of the territory and an expert’s opinion.
- At the end there must be signatures of residents, in an amount of at least 50%.
You can also submit an application on the State Services website. It also indicates the grounds for repair work, the desired timing, and information about the applicant. This portal has a Capital Repair Fund tab, where you can leave your application in the form provided.
What problems can you complain about?
The condition of roads is regulated by GOST GOST R 50597‑2017. Roads and streets. Requirements for operational condition acceptable under the conditions of ensuring road safety. Control methods . It contains acceptable requirements for the road surface, roadsides, bicycle paths and other infrastructure elements. If there are deviations from the standards, they must be eliminated. In the case of roads, violations are the following conditions:
- The holes are longer than 15 cm (imagine a hundred-ruble bill), wider than 60 cm (twice the length of an A4 sheet) and deeper than 5 cm (the height of a bank card).
- Potholes are smaller in size, but on a section of the road with a length of 100 m or more.
- Waves more than 3 cm deep on main streets and more than 5 cm on local streets.
- Ruts are 2–3 cm deep depending on the category of the road. Ruts of more than 5 cm are eliminated through major repairs.
- Rails, railway tracks, storm drain gratings and well hatches are underestimated or overestimated by more than 1 cm.
These violations must be corrected in 1-14 days depending on the problem and traffic congestion. For example, a pothole on a highway that runs through the entire city must be repaired within a day, while on a bicycle path or in a residential area – within 12 days.
Previously, GOST R 50597‑93 was in force, but now it is no longer relevant. You need to focus on the new GOST R 50597‑2017. It does not provide for deviations from the established parameters of the road surface, as stated in paragraph 5.2.4: “The roadway surface should not have defects in the form of potholes, subsidence, breaks, ruts and other damage.”
Yuri Avanesov
Leading lawyer of the European Legal Service
Legal advice
The legislation defines responsibility for the construction, repair, and maintenance of rural roads. If villagers are not happy with the quality of the road in their community, they must act in accordance with the law and hold the local government accountable. In your actions you should rely on the provisions of Federal Law number 131 and number 257.
IMPORTANT! Federal Law 131 of October 6, 2003 (Article 14, paragraph 1, subparagraph 5) indicates that compulsory medical authorities are responsible for all issues related to repairing a rural road and maintaining its safety.
According to Federal Law 257 of November 8, 2007, the local administration must carry out such types of road activities as control over the safety of local roads.
To protect your rights, lawyers recommend contacting the local government administration first, and only if it fails to act, contact the prosecutor’s office and the court. The inaction of responsible persons must be declared illegal.
In order to make your statement more significant for the prosecutor's office, you need to focus on the danger of bad roads for road users.
And also that the poor route to the village causes a delay in the arrival of ambulances and fire brigades.
Where to contact
There are many services that accept citizens’ requests. These include government websites and online resources of activists.
City administration
The first way is to write an appeal to the local administration or the city improvement department. Go to the official website of the locality and find the “Appeals” section. Attach photographs to the letter and indicate the exact address of the problem area. You will have to wait approximately 33 days for a response: three days are required to register a request, and 30 are given for a response.
However, this is not the most effective way. They may write to you that the hole has not been found, there is no money, or repairs to this area are not planned.
Often officials don’t even try to lift a finger: they are accustomed to impunity, so no one does anything. Why fuss if you don’t face any consequences for inaction? And a person believes in a miracle that just one piece of paper will cause all officials to immediately rush to work. But that's not true.
Vladimir Kostrov
organizer of "RosYama Lipetsk"
Activist websites
It is more effective to write an appeal through activist services. One of the popular ones is “RosYama”.
It automatically generates a letter based on the data you enter and sends it to the traffic police. It is better to attach photographs to the application and mark on the map the place in question so that the inspection officer can find it. Before submitting information, you need to register on the site so that you can receive a response by email.
Before: broken road in the village of Nizhegorodka, Bashkortostan. rosyama.ru
After: the repaired road. rosyama.ru
In some cities there are communities of activists, for example, “Beautiful Petersburg”, “Beautiful Lipetsk”, “Beautiful Kirov”. On their websites you can complain not only about roads, but also about other problems: broken sidewalks, unauthorized dumping, or parking on the lawn.
The resource automatically generates a message and sends it to the responsible municipal authority, but not to the traffic police. And this is the downside: they may send you an unsubscribe.
If the appeal was effective and the road was repaired, change the status of the complaint on the website and brag about your success on social networks. The required work may not be done in the best possible way, but it is still a victory.
Before: there is no sidewalk, in the off-season people walk on mud. vk.com/lipetsk_krasiv
After: the sidewalk is made. vk.com/lipetsk_krasiv
Traffic police website
The traffic police monitors road safety, so the most effective way is to contact them directly.
This can be done through the official website. It doesn’t matter who owns it and where the road is located: in the yard, in a parking lot or on the main street of the city. After receiving the request, the traffic police officer checks whether there is a problem. If yes, he issues an order to the owner of the road for repairs. It must be completed within 1–14 days according to GOST. You can download application templates here; in the header, don’t forget to change the region to yours.
The traffic police website has a feature: you cannot paste copied text into the “Text of appeal” field. In this way, the department stops the mass sending of messages through copy-paste. We bypassed this system and began to attach the text of the appeal along with photographs in a Word document, and in the field itself write a short phrase: “Please consider my application (the application and photographs of the offense are attached in the files).” It is advisable to submit the appeal in Word 97–2003 format so that the traffic police can open and read it.
Vladimir Kostrov
If you see that somewhere there is no hatch or there are dangerous holes that could cause an accident, report them immediately by phone to the traffic police duty department so that the responsible employees can take action faster. Perhaps with this appeal you will prevent an accident or save someone’s life, and not only achieve road repairs.
GIVE THE FORCE OF LAW
At the beginning of this year, two organizations at once proposed making the Traffic Rules a law, and not a document approved by the government. State Duma deputy, first deputy head of the Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building Vyacheslav Lysakov believes that now the traffic rules are a by-law, that is, nothing more than instructions for drivers and pedestrians. But as a federal law, they will earn much better!
Actually, he was not the first to come up with this: Russian legislators have already put forward similar ideas. For example, back in 2006, the United Russia faction instructed Senator Vladimir Fedorov (former head of the Russian State Traffic Inspectorate) to prepare a consolidated law, which was supposed to include traffic rules and a number of other acts regulating road traffic. But then things didn’t go beyond the general concept.
And now the Ministry of Transport has developed a draft law “On the organization of road traffic.” The ministry explains its interest by the fact that transport problems in cities lead to serious economic losses that reach 7–9% of GDP per year.
At present, there is simply no set of rules that would clearly distribute responsibilities for organizing traffic between departments and authorities at different levels. The main burden falls on the traffic police, but it is clearly not coping. Actually, this is the root of evil of many road problems.
What to do if you sent a reply, but the road was not repaired
Activists of the “Beautiful Lipetsk” movement have calculated that on average, problems are resolved in 20–25% of requests, and in other cases they receive excuses. The RosYama service gives approximately the same statistics. But this is not a reason to give up.
Step 1. Apply a second time
If the first letter did not work, write again. Involve neighbors, friends and colleagues - have everyone post a message about the problem. The more of them there are, the more likely it is that municipal authorities will begin to do something.
We take the second step and continue to apply until we receive the result. If you receive a reply, you send a second appeal to the traffic police and at the same time write to the prosecutor’s office. In 2021, I sent 140 applications and several dozen complaints, and in 2015 - more than 300.
Vladimir Kostrov
It is important that the traffic police work according to the law. The employee visiting the site must comply with the Administrative Regulations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Flowchart of the execution of the state function not only to draw up an order to repair the problem area, but also to initiate a case of an administrative offense Article 12.34 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. If this happens, the official faces a fine of 50-100 thousand rubles - this gives city authorities much more motivation to repair roads.
Step 2. Contact the prosecutor's office
If the hole is not removed and the traffic police does not initiate a case, you need to contact the prosecutor's office. She will file a claim in court, which will oblige the contractor to make repairs. However, this does not always work. Sometimes prosecutors do not want to spoil relations with city officials and try to hush up the problem.
Step 3. Write a complaint to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation
The last stage is a complaint to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs about non-compliance with the law by traffic police officers or to the Russian Prosecutor's Office about the inaction of the regional prosecutor. The federal department forwards the first appeal to the regional level, so it may also not be effective. The second time the complaint will be considered - and then wait for the problem to be resolved.
Complaint from Lipetsk activists against traffic police officers in the Lipetsk region. After hundreds of such appeals, it was possible to initiate administrative cases. The amount of fines issued to road owners in 2018 amounted to 29.4 million rubles
Future plans
Moscow's transport system is becoming more complex every year. If 10–15 years ago the public transport system included only buses, trolleybuses and trams, now the Moscow Central Circle and the Moscow Central Diameters have appeared. The network of roads and metro is expanding, new routes are appearing.
New information systems make it easier to manage such a large machine. Smart traffic lights are appearing that can “communicate” with each other. At off-peak times, they switch signals so that cars can move faster.
The center has a passenger transportation control system - the movement of buses and trolleybuses is marked on the map in real time. You can even see how many people entered the cabin at a particular stop. This changes analytics and qualitatively improves transport management.
What to remember
- Good roads are a requirement for road safety.
- Any road must be repaired within 1-14 days without any excuses.
- If you receive an unsubscribe, you need to resend requests until the problem is resolved.
- Silence is a sign of agreement with broken roads.
- It is worth involving friends and acquaintances in the matter. If at least 5% of motorists begin to demand order, then the traffic police will drown in mountains of paper. It will become easier for them to fix problems without waiting for calls.
