The Supreme Court (SC) has recognized the lawful point of the Road Code, which obliges drivers to wear reflective vests or jackets in the dark outside the city. Lawyer Lev Voropayev demanded that the rule be abolished: he believes that it is illegal to require the driver to perform duties not related to driving. Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the traffic police convinced the Armed Forces of the opposite.
Chelyabinsk lawyer and human rights activist Lev Voropaev, who turned to the Supreme Court, tried to challenge paragraph 2.3.4 of the traffic rules. It says that a driver must wear a reflective vest or jacket with reflective tapes in the dark when a forced stop (or during an accident). Mr. Voropayev, in his lawsuit, insisted that a motorist, coming out from behind the wheel of a car, was no longer obliged to fulfill his duties as a driver, since at that moment he was, in fact, a pedestrian.
The position of the government (traffic regulations are established by a resolution of 1090 of 1993) in the Supreme Court was expressed by Yulia Peskovaya, a representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Dmitry Mitroshin, a representative of the traffic police of Russia. Ms. Peskovaya said that Lev Voropayev misinterprets the rules of the traffic regulations: the driver is legally considered to be the one who stepped out of the car.
Dmitry Mitroshin added that the term “driving” is not legally disclosed, but the driver is a general concept associated not only with the manipulation of the pedals and the steering wheel.
He cited as an example the duty of a citizen as a driver to make sure before starting the movement that there are no technical malfunctions of the car – for that, it is not necessary to get behind the wheel.
The judge of the Supreme Court, Nikolay Romanenkov, in the course of the hearings inquired as to why, in general, “in whose interests” the norm for vests was introduced. This is necessary so that other road users could be better seen on the country roads that emerged from the car, Dmitry Mitroshin explained – such a rule was introduced in the traffic rules in 2018 to improve road safety. Yulia Peskova noted that a similar duty had previously been introduced for pedestrians moving along the curb at dusk.
Mr. Romanenkov separately inquired about the responsibility for failure to comply with the obligation to wear a vest with reflective material. Mr. Mitroshin said that it is not. Earlier on this topic a separate explanation was released by the traffic police of Russia, from which it follows that fines against drivers in such cases do not apply.
As a result of the hearings, the Supreme Court decided to dismiss the claim of Mr. Voropayev. The norm of traffic rules about vests, thus recognized legal.