Campaign to Defend the Rights of Car Owners — Viktor Travin, Valery Borshchev, Alexei Navalny — Interview — 2003-07-24

A. NORKIN I’ve already mentioned several times today what our topic is: the campaign to defend motorists’ rights. I’ve looked through, together with our guests, the questions you sent in online. We’ve got an overlap of issues here: registration, car insurance, and more. I’d like to start with this question. Andrei Nikolaev asks: "I think all mandatory insurance should be abolished. Let whoever wants insurance buy it. Too bad I don’t have a car." Who wants to start? V. TRAVIN Let me try to answer that. In fact, it seems to me that the law on mandatory third-party liability insurance conflicts with another law, the consumer protection law, which clearly states that paid services cannot be imposed on people. That is the first basis for raising the issue of this law’s legitimacy and constitutionality before the Constitutional Court. I think sooner or later someone will dare to do that. A. NORKIN We’ve already received questions along those lines. If you’ll allow me to interrupt, let’s move straight to specifics. Anatoly asks: "Have my rights been violated by the fact that the state has effectively declared my current third-party liability insurance contract invalid? No compensation payments are предусмотрено." And he asks how you assess his prospects of appealing specifically to the Constitutional Court. V. TRAVIN It’s probably not quite correct to say that a contract is automatically terminated when the mandatory insurance law comes into force. All insurance companies—or at least most of them, as far as I know—are ready to convert a voluntary insurance contract into a mandatory one. And no one is saying that if you don’t have mandatory insurance, your voluntary insurance contract automatically ceases to be valid. If the insurance company is willing to reissue it, by all means, you can do that. As for the prospects of going to court, I think they are more than favorable. In our association, we counted more than forty grounds for doing so. It’s impossible to list them all here—we simply don’t have enough airtime. V. BORSHCHYOV I think this is a very revealing situation. It reflects a characteristic tendency of our bureaucracy. The thing is, a bureaucrat is built in such a way that he solves the state’s problems in whatever way is convenient for him—not in the way that is convenient for us, the residents, the public, but in the way that suits him. And that often leads to contradictions. Even if there is no malicious intent, even if there is no corruption behind it. That’s just how the system works. That is why the campaign we have launched is meant to put society on alert. Be careful, be vigilant, and in this case look at how rights are being violated. The option of registering cars at dealerships is being taken away. A term is being floated, as if there had been something shady going on there. Dear friends, for years everything was fine, for years you worked that way, no facts were ever presented, and now suddenly it’s convenient for you to say this, so you declare it. Even from a legal point of view, this is a serious violation. As a member of the independent expert legal council, I can say that their position here is very vulnerable. They have deprived not only citizens, but also car dealerships, of an established practice. They have confirmed that the state is an extremely unreliable partner. And that is why we believe this campaign has serious prospects. Because this is not just arbitrariness. It is a persistent trend: the bureaucracy wants to take revenge. And I think we need to unite here in order to push back against that. A. NORKIN How do you yourselves characterize this campaign? Nikolai calls it a "campaign of public pressure" and doubts it will succeed. First, do you agree with that wording, "campaign of public pressure"? And second, do you share his doubts that it will produce results? A. NAVALNY We ourselves have in fact presented it precisely as a campaign of public pressure. We wanted to do something that, in principle, has never really worked in Russia. We wanted to try. We wanted to try to organize civil society—to bring together various motorists’ organizations, media outlets that write for motorists, and simply ordinary people, in other words the public itself. Not state organizations or anything like that. We wanted the pressure on the Moscow police headquarters (GUVD) to come specifically from the public, so that it would reverse its decision. V. BORSHCHYOV I’d like to say something to the pessimists. Whenever decisions are made, wherever they are made, public opinion is always noted one way or another. That does not mean it will be taken into account or agreed with. But there is always a box to tick for it—it is recorded. You’ve probably noticed the practice: some document is being prepared in the government or by the authorities, information is floated to the public, and they watch the reaction. Have there been victories? Yes. Take the media law connected with terrorism. The reaction was intense, and we succeeded in getting the president to veto it. But there have also been defeats. Take the national anthem, when there was quite an active reaction and the intelligentsia spoke out against it, but as one official said, Plisetskaya’s business is dancing, not judging the anthem. In other words, there was contempt. So of course this is no guarantee that society’s opinion will be heard, but it is never useless. It always has some effect, and that is why I would urge as many people as possible to join this campaign. A. NORKIN Nadezhda, for example, says: "If the prices for mandatory insurance were reasonable, it could be welcomed. Otherwise, what we have is daylight robbery." She even gives her own figures—500 to 1,000 rubles. That, she says, would be reasonable. But what exists now... V. BORSHCHYOV I’m not going to comment on what is reasonable and what is not; I haven’t done the calculations. I know only one thing: the base rate for mandatory insurance is 1,980 rubles. And if you also take into account that it is multiplied by a coefficient of "2," since we are talking about Moscow residents, it clearly exceeds the Russian subsistence minimum several times over. So one can already say that not all citizens, not all our compatriots, can afford it. A. NAVALNY I’d like to speak precisely from the standpoint of calculations. We at Yabloko have done similar calculations. In principle, we support the idea of mandatory third-party liability insurance. But for all eight years we voted against it solely because we have very clear calculations and figures—which we showed everyone—demonstrating that the rates should be at least half as high. In other words, if a transparent licensing system were truly introduced in this insurance market, and if foreign insurance companies were allowed into it, the rates would be at least two times lower. We have these calculations, we are ready to prove it to anyone, and ready to present them anywhere. A. NORKIN Is there any hope that the coefficients and rates for mandatory insurance will be revised? Or are these still only your proposals? A. NAVALNY There is a huge amount of money tied up in this. There is very strong lobbying for exactly this procedure of third-party liability insurance. And the insurance companies that have gained access to this market no longer want to let anyone else in. Accordingly, it is no longer in their interest to lower the rates. So of course we will fight for this by every possible means, but in the short term it is unlikely that we will manage to bring them down. A. NORKIN Moving away from the figures for a moment, here is a question from Alexander Medvedev: "Why can’t I, with my policy, get behind the wheel of my brother’s, in-law’s, friend’s, etc. car?" V. TRAVIN The question is not framed quite correctly. What does he mean by "with my policy"? A mandatory insurance policy or a voluntary one? A. NORKIN Mandatory. V. TRAVIN Why not? If he is listed on the policy, then he can drive it. By all means. But he can get behind the wheel even without a policy. It’s just that if an insured event occurs, one of the parties in the accident will not receive compensation for damages, that’s all. A. NAVALNY What is insured there is not the person, but the car. Everything is tied to the vehicle. A. NORKIN That is in fact what he’s asking. He says: "Why is it not me who is insured, but my car? What kind of civil liability does my car have?" V. TRAVIN You see, that’s the issue. In fact, there are a huge number of questions we have for the lawmakers. And that is why I think that, since such questions are now arising not only among citizens but even in the Federation Council, which has announced that it will apparently return to the issue of possible amendments and additions to this law after the summer recess, something is bound to change. It simply cannot remain as it is now. A. NORKIN Let’s move from insurance to registration, since we’ve already touched on that topic and there are questions. Olga Rodnikova from Moscow believes: "Actually, things aren’t all that bad, because Mr. Pronin promised to increase the number of hours available for vehicle registration. Didn’t he?" V. BORSHCHYOV No. We calculated how much extra time that would mean per person, given the queues. Fifty-seven seconds. And what, are those 57 seconds going to ease the situation? Nothing of the sort. And then, you see what happens? They say they will increase staff numbers and extend working hours. That also costs money. If there was a system that saved taxpayers’ money, why are our leaders now so casually dismantling it and throwing away our money purely for their own convenience? Not to mention that they are in no way solving the problem. There will be queues, there will be shortages. And wherever there are queues and shortages, there are always bribes. That’s the law of life. A. NAVALNY The whole thing is happening so cynically. Pronin spoke, and our traffic police bosses spoke too, saying that staff would be increased and hours extended. But if, for the sake of a fair test, listeners simply call the MREO office and ask, they’ll be told that hours have been extended by two hours on Tuesday. That’s it—two extra hours on one day for this enormous volume of people. So, as we calculated, taking into account the number of MREO offices, as Valery Vasilyevich said, that comes to 57 seconds per person. Whereas even if everything goes perfectly, the process takes at least half an hour. So we can predict what kind of queues will arise. A. NORKIN In my case, it certainly didn’t go perfectly. I remember how long our registration took. A. NAVALNY Exactly—anyone who has ever been to an MREO office in Moscow or any other MREO office, we believe, will undoubtedly support our public campaign. That’s why we think it has a good chance of succeeding. A. NORKIN Viktor, I think you just mentioned the coefficient of "2." A question immediately came in from Georgy Vasilyevich: "Why was the coefficient ‘2’ chosen for Moscow? Around 30 percent, if not more, of the vehicles in Moscow come from other regions. Why are Muscovites being made to pay for other regions?" V. TRAVIN The authors of the draft law and the tariff system apparently decided—well, perhaps not "apparently," perhaps they do have a carefully worked-out technical and economic justification. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it. For now I am forced to take their unsupported claims on faith. They say that in Moscow the risk of getting into an accident is twice as high because there are many cars and fewer streets. Accordingly, there are more cars per usable unit of square area than in other cities. Therefore the risk is twice as high. Therefore the coefficient is automatically "2." For St. Petersburg the coefficient is similarly "1.8," for example. There the ratio between street area and the number of cars differs by 0.2. It all seems very far-fetched to me, frankly. Moreover, it seems to me that this violates the constitutional provision guaranteeing citizens equal rights regardless of place of residence, nationality, sex, or age. It turns out that a resident of Moscow has to pay more than someone living in a village. So perhaps it is more advantageous for me to live in a village than in Moscow. Maybe that’s the solution—move away... A. NORKIN In informal conversations, the authors of the law themselves admit: it’s obvious that people in the rest of Russia live poorly, so Muscovites are basically expected to pay for the whole rest of the country. They don’t even hide it much. The same applies to foreign cars. The rate for foreign-made cars is much higher. Yet whether a foreign car drives around Moscow or a Zhiguli (a Soviet/Russian-made car), the risk is the same. Nevertheless, owners of foreign cars are expected to pay for everyone else in Moscow, for the whole country, for domestic cars. V. BORSHCHYOV There is an even more ridiculous coefficient—the one tied to the age of the vehicle owner. Up to age 22, with a short driving record, the coefficient is "1.3," and after 22 it is just "1," meaning effectively no coefficient at all. So it turns out that a young driver with less than two years behind the wheel is considered less dangerous on the road than an 80-year-old grandfather with a glass eye, a crutch, and a whole list of ailments from a medical encyclopedia. A. NORKIN Well, come on. Eighty-year-old grandfathers only drive in America. One of them recently drove into a market there. V. BORSHCHYOV Fine, a 70-year-old then. You understand that this is absurd. The approach has to be individual, however difficult that may be. You can’t measure everyone by the same yardstick: if you’re 22 and have been driving for two years, then sorry, you’re a "rookie," but if you’re 70... maybe he only got behind the wheel yesterday, maybe he only just got lucky yesterday—some rich uncle in America died and left him an Oka (a small Russian city car). V. TRAVIN There should be a criterion based on driving experience. V. BORSHCHYOV Of course. A. NAVALNY In addition, there should be a discount coefficient. If you’ve driven all 70 of your years without accidents, why shouldn’t you get some kind of discount? V. BORSHCHYOV It is provided for, but I very much doubt that the traffic police will supply timely data—and above all data that reflects objective reality. A. NORKIN Andrei from Krasnoyarsk believes that mandatory auto liability insurance protects only the injured party. "But what about the person at fault, who may suffer many times more? Who can insure them?" V. BORSHCHYOV I can’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question. The answer is already built into it. No one. A. NORKIN I see. Another question, again from Georgy Vasilyevich—he’s asking a lot of them. Now the topic of protecting motorists’ rights is being interpreted more broadly. It’s about those notorious "shell garages." I won’t even read the whole thing out, because you understand what it’s about. V. BORSHCHYOV That’s my favorite sore subject. I’m afraid we’ve now strayed from insurance to a completely wonderful campaign that was carried out at the right time and in the right way... A. NORKIN No, if we’re talking about protecting motorists’ rights, we can’t avoid this topic. V. BORSHCHYOV Fair enough. As for the "shell garages"—the situation in Moscow is as follows. I don’t know about other regions; it’s probably calmer there in this respect. In Moscow, last summer the final Moscow government decree regulating the registration, placement, demolition, removal, rental payments, and other documents governing relations between shell-garage owners and the Moscow authorities quietly expired. The last document died. After that there was a legal vacuum for a year. And on July 8 of this year, Mr. Luzhkov finally signed yet another decree that provides for exactly the same things as before—that is, the registration of these shell garages, a procedure not предусмотрено by federal law. I understand why cars or newborn children need to be registered. But why register a shell garage, a pair of shoes, a watch, a camera? I don’t understand that. And second, they have now tried to create a legal basis for charging for them. They have raised the issue of paying land rent. Now they will calculate how much that patch of land costs and conclude a lease agreement with the shell-garage owner for the land under that metal shelter. Even though a metal shelter is not real estate. The hurricane of 1998 showed that it was the most movable kind of property in Moscow, when they were piled on top of one another. And yet now they are going to try to charge us as if it were real estate occupying a plot of land under a lease. It seems to me that this latest Moscow government decree is unlawful and illegal, but the final determination of just how unlawful it is will be made in court or by the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor’s office has already filed several protests against previous government decrees concerning these shell garages. A. NORKIN Back again to the Constitutional Court, and again on insurance. Alexei asks: "Can the law on mandatory insurance be challenged in the Constitutional Court on the following grounds? From the standpoint of common sense, it is the licensed driver who takes part in an accident. If the car is roadworthy, the driver can operate any car. Otherwise this is a restriction of constitutional rights." V. BORSHCHYOV Another rhetorical question. One could ask such questions endlessly. The answers are built into all of them. A. NORKIN People are concerned about this, and they’re asking the three of you because, as I understand it, they see in you people who have decided to take on this whole mess and defend their interests. So they are going to ask you such questions. V. BORSHCHYOV It is an absolutely correct question, absolutely properly and lawfully framed. It practically already contains a ready-made phrase for a complaint, petition, or appeal. It just needs to be properly drafted and filed. I can’t answer it definitively, because that is for a court to decide. But it is absolutely correctly formulated, both in form and in substance. V. TRAVIN Yabloko will take care of the drafting, and we will work through it legally. It really is not a simple issue. But I believe there are every possible grounds for appealing to the Constitutional Court. V. BORSHCHYOV Absolutely every ground. A. NAVALNY The lawmakers simply view not the car owner, but the car. They say: a car is a source of increased danger. Therefore all legal actions concerning the car mean that the car must be insured. Whether the person is insured or not is another matter. So there are a huge number of distortions here. Let me give a simple example—Yabloko gives this example to everyone, and no one can answer us, neither the insurance companies nor the people lobbying for this. An accident happens in Altai, the car is insured. There, excuse me, you may never find a traffic police officer, let alone some expert assessor, and all this is supposed to happen within seven days. If you run all over Altai looking for an assessor and can’t find one, the insurance company will tell you: "Sorry, that’s not our fault." And there are a huge number of examples like that. So the idea may be good, but the system for implementing it is completely unfit for purpose. V. BORSHCHYOV And here’s something else to cheer you up. It is possible that amendments will be made to the traffic rules under which accident diagrams and case materials at the scene will be drawn up by the participants themselves, however they can manage. A. NORKIN One can imagine what that will look like. V. BORSHCHYOV Like you, I have a hard time imagining it. If not every traffic police officer can do it properly—and in my practice I have seen only three properly done cases out of thousands—then I have a very poor idea of how accident participants themselves are supposed to do it. A. NORKIN I remember several cases in Moscow where sorting out the circumstances of an accident ended in a shootout. V. BORSHCHYOV Exactly. That is precisely what this will lead to. V. TRAVIN I think they should have passed a law on weapons in parallel as well. A. NORKIN Here’s another question: "Why is state-owned transport not subject to state insurance? Is that some kind of privilege?" asks Natalya Petrovna. V. BORSHCHYOV No, it is subject to insurance. At the moment only one issue is being resolved: finding funds in the budget for possible compensation for damage caused in traffic accidents. At first the issue was decided this way: vehicles belonging to state organizations would not be insured because there was no money in the budget for it. But later, under public pressure—thank you—that issue was resolved positively after all. The only problem now is this: they are looking for the money that may be needed to compensate damages. V. BORSHCHYOV There you have it—an illustration of the state as a partner. It always wants to place itself in a special position. A. NORKIN Well, I don’t know, from here on it’s mostly rhetorical questions. V. BORSHCHYOV Let’s try some that fall within our area. A. NORKIN Valentina asks: "Who has the right to impose mandatory services on me without my consent?" V. BORSHCHYOV The state. V. TRAVIN No one. The consumer protection law prohibits the imposition of paid services. That’s where we began. A. NORKIN Alexei asks: "In the event of an accident, the authorities propose insuring the car as the participant in the accident. By that logic, in a murder case one could consider the gun the culprit, rather than the person holding it." A. NAVALNY Exactly. V. BORSHCHYOV The answer is contained in the question. It is an entirely correct question. A. NORKIN We have literally one minute left. Briefly, what are your next steps, what do you want to do, and what are you expecting? V. TRAVIN I think we will involve not only public organizations, but also our deputies in the State Duma and the Moscow City Duma. It won’t be long before the heads of the Moscow police headquarters appear in the Duma—they will be asking for money, for a larger budget. That is a legitimate request. But I believe our deputies will ask them the same questions that Echo of Moscow listeners are asking now. And I think the vote will depend on the answers. A. NORKIN Do you have any contact information? Perhaps remind listeners of some phone numbers they can use to reach you? A. NAVALNY You can call 780-30-14. That is Yabloko’s phone number. Since we are acting here as a driving force, we are ready to work with absolutely all public organizations, private individuals, other political parties—we are not claiming any exclusive ownership of this idea. We are ready to invite absolutely everyone to join in and somehow try to put pressure on the Moscow police headquarters and solve these problems. I just want to say that specifically regarding violations in registration procedures, Yavlinsky has sent an inquiry to Pronin, head of the Moscow police headquarters, and Pronin is expected to respond soon. We’ll see what they say, and then we’ll act accordingly. Live on the air of Echo of Moscow radio were: Viktor Travin, president of the Legal Defense Board for Car Owners; Valery Borshchyov, human rights advocate; Alexei Navalny, member of the regional council of the Yabloko party.