Fines from cameras for compulsory motor liability insurance – how and when will it work?

• 1. Are cameras fined for compulsory motor liability insurance today? 1.1. "Duck" about the beginning of autofixation
• 1.2. But the beginning was made a long time ago!

Important facts from the article

1. As of May 25, 2021, video recording cameras are not fined for the lack of compulsory motor insurance.
2. The Ministry of Internal Affairs says that once the scheme is established, insurance checks will be launched.
3. But the exact start date of recording in Moscow and the regions has not been reported.
4. Avtodoriya will check your insurance and issue fines.

The new initiative to video record the absence of compulsory motor insurance is not new at all. But information began to be widely discussed online only in August 2021. Then many publications actively started talking about the fact that cameras would begin to fine for lack of insurance as early as September 1. Then they started talking about a new fine from recording cameras, but only in Moscow for driving without compulsory motor insurance, with new dates: from October 1, other sources – from November 1, 2021, and then in August 2021. How are things going with automatic registration of the absence of a policy today?

Are cameras fined for compulsory motor liability insurance today?

No. As of May 25, 2021, the innovation has not yet appeared - we are monitoring the situation daily and will update the article in a timely manner when this happens. But today, cameras record driving without insurance, and instead of fines, drivers receive notifications that they do not have a policy.

The “proofs” to confirm this are simple: You will not find genuine information on the Internet about cases of fines from traffic police cameras for the lack of compulsory motor liability insurance. By genuine information we mean the presence of photos or scans of decisions issued automatically, with a specific indication that the fine was issued specifically for driving without a policy.

Update as of August 20, 2021: CCTV cameras have begun to record violations, but fines have not yet been introduced. Instead of “chain letters”, drivers receive notifications about the lack of insurance and the need to purchase it. More than 5 thousand such notifications have been sent out. At the end of testing, fines will be sent out, but it is not announced when this will happen.

"Duck" about the beginning of autofixation

Meanwhile, at the end of September 2021, information began to actively spread across the network that cameras had begun checking drivers for driving without compulsory motor liability insurance. In particular, a certain screenshot of a fine for driving without a policy from a user, sent via WhatsApp messenger, is provided.

This is what the penalty looks like:

This fine was probably issued against the motorist, but by mistake. Or the mobile phone screenshot is nothing more than a fake. The third option is that the fine is shown by a fraudulent program, which is designed to offer to pay it using the scammers’ details. Why this conclusion?

The thing is that as of the date of the screenshot, there was no official statement about the start of auto-fixation of this violation. The traffic police stated, as we mentioned above, that the cameras have learned to recognize drivers without compulsory motor insurance, but fines have not yet been issued.

But the main thing is that there is simply no such amount of fine for the lack of an insurance contract. 500 rubles are issued if the driver is not included in the current policy. The screenshot indicates that the punishment for driving by a driver without a policy. And such a fine today is 800 rubles (400 with a discount).

But the beginning was made a long time ago!

Meanwhile, information about new fines from cameras for compulsory motor liability insurance is far from new - the beginning was made back in 2021, when this initiative was first launched by the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate together with the RSA:

• first, one popular news publication reported that the cameras were planned to be equipped with the ability to begin fining for the lack of an insurance policy as early as January 1, 2021,
• then the Internet circulated news about the beginning of fixation of compulsory motor liability insurance from the beginning of 2021,
• then similarly from the beginning of 2021,
• But in 2021, heated discussions began about an allegedly new law on fines from cameras for compulsory motor liability insurance; the future start dates were announced:
• September 1, then moved to October 1,
• after November 1st,
• Now cameras have “learned” to recognize that a driver does not have compulsory motor liability insurance, and drivers have begun to receive information about this in their mailboxes. But these are still not fines.

When will commit go live?

Very soon!

The main problem and difficulty, according to the traffic police, is setting up and integrating databases of two important components for legislators to have such an opportunity:

• traffic police database of car numbers,
• RSA database for existing insurance policies.

We will talk about how this will work below, but here we will only note that without combining or integrating these two databases, the cameras will not work in terms of checking compulsory motor liability insurance.

Meanwhile, despite the abundance of constant postponements of the beginning of recording by cameras of the absence of a policy, the official response of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, current as of May 25, 2021, is simple:

Until the completion of the specified work [on merging databases – approx. ed.] law enforcement activities are not carried out automatically for the specified elements of an administrative offense. It will be started as soon as the information systems are technically ready.

This is all you need to know about when the registration of lack of insurance for drivers will begin. That is, a specific date is not named. But let’s make a reservation once again that we are monitoring current information and will update the article when this changes.

Where will these cameras be located?

Initially, it was planned to launch an experiment to check whether drivers have compulsory motor liability insurance with cameras in Moscow. At the same time, we are not talking about all fixation complexes or even their specific types, but about individual cameras on individual sections of roads.

Obviously, these specific areas and addresses are not reported, otherwise drivers without compulsory motor liability insurance simply will not drive there.

When will cameras start detecting lack of insurance?

The current official response from the Ministry of Internal Affairs states that until the completion of the designated work, automatic detection of these offenses is not carried out. It will be launched only after technical preparation of information systems.

As can be seen from the official response from the department, it is not known when the cameras for compulsory motor liability insurance will start working. The exact date has not been announced. Obviously, this will happen after integrating and configuring the traffic police and RSA databases.

By tradition, a pilot regime for automatically recording the lack of insurance will be launched in Moscow. Following the capital, cameras will begin to identify drivers without compulsory motor insurance in Tatarstan. Various innovations of the traffic police are also being tested in this region. After successfully passing the tests, the automatic video recording system for the absence of a “motor citizen” will work throughout Russia.

Which cameras issue fines?

As of May 25, 2021, it is known that only Avtodoria will issue fines for the lack of compulsory motor liability insurance. This is what they look like on the roads:

But this is also part of the experiment. The main thing is to have a database of cars without insurance. Everything else is a matter of technique. After all, auto-fixing cameras only read car numbers, and the rest is done by a program that can be updated, replaced, or modified.

Thus, in the future, possibly other types of cameras besides Avtodoriya, including Kriss of various modifications, Strelki and others, will be fined for driving without compulsory motor liability insurance.

Possible errors in the operation of OSAGO cameras

The main fear of drivers is an erroneous fine sent from cameras for the lack of compulsory motor insurance. This is acceptable in case of incorrect data recording. Such a fine will have to be challenged in court, which requires time and money. And during the entire period of proving the driver’s case, information on his violation will be displayed in the database.

The problem of drivers using fake policies will definitely come to light. To avoid fines, you should check your policy after purchase in the same PCA database. Checking for car owners is free and carried out via the Internet.

How are they fined?

To check whether a driver has an insurance contract on the road automatically, the camera must:

1. first read the license plate number of the car,
2. send information to some program for verification,
3. the program must be connected to a database, which, in turn, draws information from the traffic police and RSA databases and compares the license plate number and the insurance contract,
4. If the driver does not have a contract, the program issues a fine, which is then rechecked.

If the driver gets caught several times

In this case, the developers of fines from cameras for driving without compulsory motor insurance promised no more than 1 fine per day. But whether to believe this information or not is a second matter. By analogy, Avtodoriya is now fined for speeding as many times as the car passes under the cameras - even if the fact of speeding was the same. If you drive under 3, for example, pairs of Avtodorii, then 3 “letters of happiness” will come.

Thus, even for the lack of MTPL insurance, fines can be issued by all cameras under which the driver passes.

Fines for the lack of compulsory motor liability insurance policies detected by cameras will begin in the spring of 2021

The system for checking MTPL policies using photo-video recording systems, which is currently being tested in Moscow, will be put into operation in the spring of 2020. From now on, car owners will begin to receive fines for the lack of insurance detected by cameras. For now, they only receive notifications about the need to insure their liability.

At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has not yet really decided how often “chain letters” should be sent to violators . That is: should we issue a decree against them for traveling without a policy under each camera (and there are about 1.6 thousand of them in Moscow ), once a day, or give them a longer period of time to visit the insurance company?..

The Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO) in its current edition does not address the issue of one-time violations under MTPL at all . If, for example, for free travel within the framework of the Platon system you can be fined once per day, for the lack of a diagnostic card (fines for this will return from July 27 next year) - too, then Art. 12.37 of the Code of Administrative Offenses does not stipulate a time frame at all. In essence, it allows for prosecution as many times as the number of times the inspector caught the driver not having a compulsory motor liability insurance policy.

However, this article, in principle, does not provide for the possibility of automatically recording a violation . It is possible that before transferring the project from test to production mode, changes will have to be made to it.

In general, according to the Kommersant publication, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is still aiming to determine the time “necessary and sufficient” to purchase a policy . As experts note, this is necessary, if only because the policy, after registration, begins to be valid only the next day .

Now, while the system is being tested and violating car owners are not fined, a notification is generated once a day . That is: only one trip without a policy is taken into account, recorded by one camera once, then data from other complexes (or repeated ones from the same one) are “ignored” during the day.

Let us remind you: a pilot project to check MTPL policies using traffic cameras started in Moscow in August of this year , although the first data was taken from the complexes on May 21. At the moment, thousand notifications have been sent using the automatic system about the need to insure their motor third party liability.

Next year they want to launch the experiment in St. Petersburg and Kazan , and then throughout the country. When exactly this will happen is still unknown. In Moscow, presumably begin sending out fines in the spring of 2020.

What's the fine?

As of 2021, it is 800 rubles under Part 2 of Article 12.37 of the Administrative Code.

Meanwhile, in a number of sources you will find information about 500 rubles precisely in the context of the new possibility of recording drivers without compulsory motor liability insurance on cameras. This is not true - 500 rubles for lack of insurance is imposed in two cases:

• if you are not included in the policy or drive outside the period of use (not to be confused with expired insurance),
• if you forgot the MTPL policy itself at home, but you have an insurance contract.

The cameras will check exactly the presence of an insurance contract, and for its absence there will be a fine of exactly 800 rubles.

At the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2021, there was a lot of talk about increasing this fine to 5,000 rubles. And at the end of autumn 2021, information appeared that the fine would increase to 8,000 from November 20, plus evacuation would be provided. But all the news indicated is fake.

Possible fines

For now, fines for lack of compulsory motor insurance remain unchanged. They amount to 800 rubles regardless of the number of violations. The system will not be able to check whether the driver has already issued an insurance policy with him, so he will not be able to receive a fine of 500 rubles.

It is planned to subsequently introduce new penalties for the lack of compulsory motor liability insurance, both soft and more stringent. Thus, RSA suggests that for the first violation, instead of a fine, limit yourself to a warning. And the parliament of Kabardino-Balkaria proposed toughening penalties for repeated violations, up to and including deprivation of a driver’s license. Whether these sanctions will be introduced and when this will happen is still unknown.