Application «People's Inspector». Any (!) citizen can provide a fine to a traffic violator

CrimeaPRESS reports:

Fine from a smartphone: what is the “People’s Inspector” and what he can punish for, says Auto.Ru magazine.

Moscow authorities reported on the completion of work on a federal mobile application, with the help of which any Russian in his city will be able to record a traffic violation and send it to the police. After inspection, the owner of the car will be issued a fine.

The “People’s Inspector” program was created similar to the “Moscow Assistant”. The application is completely ready and can be launched in the very near future. What’s slowing you down? Legal nuances.

What is it, how can you fine a traffic violator using a smartphone?

For the first time, a program called “People’s Inspector” was released in 2017, but it only worked in the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan. In the fall of 2021, by his decree, President Vladimir Putin decided to launch a unified program, which every citizen can download to a smartphone and use to record traffic violations. It was assumed that corresponding changes would be made to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. The federal “People’s Inspector” was supposed to be launched by June 2022, but this did not happen.

The development of the application was entrusted to the Moscow government, which successfully uses a similar program “Moscow Assistant” in the fight against violators. Based on the latter, a new version of “People’s Inspector” was created, the functionality of which turned out to be much wider than its capital analogue. Last week it became known that the service is ready and could be launched in the near future. The program is not yet available in app stores, but the developers say it will appear soon.

What violations can be recorded through the application.

Users will have access to the option of photo and video recording of violations. Any citizen will be able to download the application to a smartphone and send to the supervisory authorities a photo of a car on the lawn, on a playground or sports ground, on the sidewalk, on a pedestrian crossing, under a prohibitory sign, in a dedicated lane, in a parking lot for taxis and special vehicles.

In addition, through the application it will be possible to record driving through a prohibitory traffic light, driving on the side of the road, violating the rules of maneuvering, crossing solid and stop lines. Fines vary from 500 to 5,000 rubles depending on the violation and the city where it was committed.

There will be rewards for vigilance. Citizens who report violations will be able to earn points by exchanging them for free travel on public transport, parking fees, theater tickets and other events.

The application will be able to automatically determine the user’s location and record the time of the violation. It can recognize not only Russian, but also Belarusian license plates, as well as road signs that prohibit stopping.

Drivers will be punished in the same way as taking photographs with a stationary camera. That is, pictures and videos from the application will not allow depriving a motorist of his license, even if the article allows it — it will only be possible to issue a fine. However, the nuances of how the system of punishing violators works in the regions will be different — it all depends on local legislation.

Those same “legal nuances”.

As the practice of recent years shows, fines issued through the Moscow Assistant application using smartphones and tablets can often be appealed and canceled in court. The basis for the appeal is the fact that smartphones and tablets are not stationary devices and are influenced and operated by humans. The law allows traffic violations to be recognized from photographs only if recorded by a stationary camera without external influences, that is, in automatic mode.

As a result, in approximately half of the cases, the courts side with the drivers due to technical non-compliance of the equipment, lawyer Mikhail Nikitin, who has extensive judicial practice in such cases, explained to Avto.Ru Magazine.

You can appeal and cancel fines from your hands and from cameras that are installed on bicycles, because they are subject to human influence. MADI and AMPP sometimes write in their regulations that tablets are attached to a vehicle moving along a certain route“but sometimes they mean bicycles,” says the auto lawyer.

However, courts do not always accept lawyers’ arguments and leave the fine in force. It turns out that the violations recorded by the phone are something of a “gray” zone. The fact of a violation seems to be obvious to all participants in the process, but on formal grounds it can be canceled. Therefore, to fully launch the federal application, it will be necessary to make changes to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. Camera expert Grigory Shukhman is sure of this. According to him, the application will have to legalize the use of the phone as a tool for recording violations.

Automotive lawyer Mikhail Nikitin clarifies that if the regions, when using the application, issue fines not according to a simplified scheme, when a photograph and confirmation of an employee of the Data Control Center or AMPP is enough, but in the general manner by calling the offender for analysis using telegrams and notices, with convening a board to make a decision according to the fine, it will be almost impossible to appeal them. This is exactly what they do, for example, in Tatarstan. On formal grounds, in this case the fine cannot be canceled.

So far nothing has changed legally. Fines from the “People’s Inspector” are not automatically recorded, because they are recorded using an application from a phone, the angle is done at the discretion of the application user. You can, of course, write whatever you want in the certificates of conformity of tablets with the application from foot inspectors. But the legality of the algorithms has not yet changed. However, the situation is different across the country. If the registration according to the “People’s Inspector” takes place not according to a simplified procedure, but according to a complete one, with the drawing up of a protocol, then there will be no questions about the operation of the systemexplains Nikitin.

A complete scheme for bringing to responsibility implies the initiation of a case, a protocol, the issuance of a ruling, consideration of the case by a collegial body with notification to the owner of the car. If the country starts using a simplified scheme, as is happening in Moscow, then motorists will be able to appeal fines, even if a violation actually took place, the lawyer is sure.

The founder of the public organization Avtomobilist, Maxim Edryshov, shares the same opinion:

If everyone could participate in the search for violators and send data, it would be good. But, as practice shows, courts do not recognize data from Moscow Assistant according to a simplified scheme. And to work according to the full scheme, there are no resources and a sufficient number of traffic police officers. Imagine if several thousand photographs come to the inspection, all the employees there will run away. One application is not enough. This story needs to be legislated. In other countries, this practice exists; people report violations even for monetary reward.

«People’s Inspector» — inevitable? When and how everything will start working.

As mentioned above, active users of the “People’s Inspector” application, by analogy with “Moscow Assistant”, are entitled to points that can be exchanged for something material. And this, according to the vice-president of the National Automobile Union (NAU) Anton Shaparin, can push people to commit fraud.

Concerned citizens exchanged photographs of what they perceived as traffic violations for points, T-shirts and caps. On the basis of these photographic materials, the Moscow Central Traffic Control Center issued fines, which could then be challenged in court, but few people did this. The Code of Administrative Offenses clearly states what automatic photo-video recording of violations is. Human hands should not be involved in the process. Otherwise, you end up with spoofed geodata and added fake signssays a representative of US.

The expert believes that it is necessary to introduce this entire system into the legal mainstream through amendments to the legislation. However, for now the authorities have taken the simplest route, essentially adapting the capital’s application to federal needs. At the same time, they spent… 134 million rubles on the development of “People’s Inspector”.

Shaparin is confident that these expenses may turn out to be in vain if new rules for installing cameras come into effect in the fall.

From September 1, 2024, the use of wearable systems in general will be illegal; amendments have been made to the legislation. Neither applications on citizens’ phones nor tablets of data center employees will be able to be used to automatically record violationssays the expert.

The US representative is referring to the new camera bill, which will come into force in September of this year. It will spell out all the technical requirements for traffic cameras, on the basis of which fines can be issued. If the scheme with the “People’s Inspector” application cannot be included in the legislation by September, it is unlikely to be able to fully operate.

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