Translated material
Punishment by parking
The Ministry of Internal Affairs recognized the inflated tariffs for the maintenance of detained cars as unfounded
Subjects of Russia unreasonably increase tariffs for the evacuation of vehicles and their placement in impound lots. This is what representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs said yesterday at a meeting of the Supreme Court (SC) on the invalidation of a government resolution that gave the executive authorities of the subjects at their discretion to set tariffs for violators of traffic rules to pay for the “services” of cars detained by traffic police inspectors. The fine for leaving a car in the wrong place is only 100 rubles, and evacuation and impound parking can cost citizens several thousand rubles, which, according to citizens who go to court, is an additional punishment to the fine, and the punishment is too severe.A lawyer from St. Petersburg, Sergei Nosov, was brought to court by circumstances to which thousands of motorists fall victim every day. Last fall, Sergei and his friends went to Pavlovsky Park. I left the car near a small square, near the Pavlovsky railway station. And when he returned from a walk, he discovered that his car was gone, and a traffic police inspector was walking around the square and cheerfully loading cars onto tow trucks. It was he who explained to Nosov that he had broken the rules by leaving the car in the wrong place, near the “no parking” sign. Having paid a fine of 100 rubles, Nosov went to the impound lot, where he was forced to pay another 3 thousand rubles. for tow truck services. Such a sum for such a minor violation seemed excessively large to Mr. Nosov, and he decided to appeal the tariff rates established by the government of St. Petersburg in the city court. But he was refused, because the tariffs were set on the basis of the federal government decree “On approval of the rules for detaining a vehicle, placing it in an impound lot and storing it,” according to which the right to set tariffs was granted to the executive bodies of the constituent entities of the federation.
Then Sergei Nosov turned to the Supreme Court and demanded that those paragraphs of the rules that regulate the payment for evacuation and impound parking be recognized as valid. First of all, Mr. Nosov was not satisfied with the word “payment” itself. According to him, within the meaning of the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO), only the actual costs of transporting and storing the car should be paid. “Expenses, according to Ozhegov’s dictionary, mean costs and expenses, and payment is remuneration for services rendered,” the St. Petersburg lawyer explained to the court. - In this case, we are talking only about payment of expenses, and they must be documented. Subjects set tariffs arbitrarily, without any economic justification. As a result, it turned out that in St. Petersburg, for example, these tariffs are four times higher than in any commercial parking lot, and three times higher than in Moscow.”
In addition, as Mr. Nosov told the court, the Code of Administrative Offenses provides that the vehicle is detained until the very reason for the detention is eliminated. That is, if the driver is caught drunk or does not have a driving license, then the offense is stopped when the car is stopped by an inspector, and there is absolutely no need to evacuate to the impound lot. The only case when such a measure is really necessary is leaving the car in the wrong place if it interferes with traffic. And it is quite difficult to pick up your car from the parking lot - to do this you need to obtain the appropriate permission from the traffic police, and also show the parking lot employees documents confirming ownership of the car. Everything requires a certain amount of time, which costs the “violators” a pretty penny. And the car is returned only after paying for the parking “services”.
“It is clear to me that the repeal of these points of the rules may lead to an increase in offenses,” Mr. Nosov said in court. “But paying a fine, and then also evacuation and impound parking, which is several dozen times more than the fine itself, is too severe a punishment.”
Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs considered Mr. Nosov’s statement to be unfounded. “Detention of a vehicle is used to suppress offenses that may cause harm to the safety and health of people. In turn, the activities of organizations involved in the evacuation and storage of cars are associated with certain costs, so the executive bodies of the constituent entities set tariffs,” said Major General of Police Alexander Avdeiko, deputy head of the legal department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in court. According to him, administrative proceedings on the fact of an offense end from the moment the car is sent to the impound lot, and then the action moves into the sphere of civil law relations, where the internal affairs bodies do not interfere, they only issue permission to receive the car from the parking lot. “The Civil Code regulates the storage agreement, and in this case the custodian (parking lot owner) must store the car, and its owner must pay the costs associated with storage,” Mr. Avdeiko noted. Here Sergei Nosov noted that civil relations imply a voluntary basis for concluding an agreement, and in this case we are talking about the forced detention and storage of vehicles.
Judge Vladimir Zaitsev reminded representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that civil legislation is exclusively under federal jurisdiction. “Why is the setting of tariffs transferred to the subjects? Has the government gone beyond its powers here? Why should the subjects do this?” - asked the judge. “Indeed, the problem of unifying tariffs is now acute, and we are now preparing a draft corresponding resolution,” admitted Alexander Avdeiko. “The subjects unreasonably inflate tariffs, this is an excess of the performer,” said the deputy head of the legal department of the Russian Traffic Safety Inspectorate, Major General of Police Alexander Ekimov. “There really is a problem,” the judge stated. “Either you say that payment issues are regulated by the subjects, then you remember some kind of methodology.” In addition, the judge was interested in why the towing of cars and impound lots were given to private commercial organizations, and why not to government agencies. “The same police would receive good financial support,” the judge noted.
As it turned out at the trial, the Federal Tariff Service - previously it was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Economic Development, and has recently been reassigned directly to the government - was indeed given instructions to develop a unified tariff schedule for the entire country, but they did not provide the court with any information about the progress of work.
Judge Vladimir Zaitsev faced a difficult task. On the one hand, there is a serious problem with the lack of a unified method for paying for impound lots; on the other hand, the abolition of the contested clauses of the rules may indeed lead to a significant increase in offenses. Perhaps the fact that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is still making efforts to correct its mistakes influenced his decision - the judge refused to satisfy the applicant’s demands.
Sergei Nosov intends to appeal this decision. In addition, as Vremya Novostei learned, the Supreme Court will soon consider several more similar applications from disgruntled motorists.