On April 15, Viktor Yanukovych, who was then the President of Ukraine, submitted to parliament a draft law providing for amendments to current regulations related to reducing excessive state pressure on the road transport industry.
The document contains the following initiatives:
- abolition of mandatory technical inspection for cars used for personal purposes,
- significant simplification of the technical inspection process for vehicles used in business,
- transfer of functions for monitoring the technical condition of cars to private companies,
- cancellation of the requirement for mandatory waybills and notarized power of attorney for the right to drive a vehicle.
The developers of the document believe that the current technical inspection procedure is hopelessly outdated. According to available data, only about one in ten drivers receives a technical inspection coupon legally after an actual check, while the rest do it through bribes. The total amount of such unofficial payments annually reaches one billion hryvnias. The explanatory note to the draft law also provides interesting statistics explaining the reasons for such changes:
- violations of maneuvering rules rank first among the causes of accidents — 39.5%,
- failure to maintain a safe distance — 20%,
- exceeding the permissible speed — 17.3%,
- violations when passing through intersections — 6.7%,
- driving into the oncoming lane — 3%,
- driving a car while intoxicated — 2.5%,
- and only 0.3% of road incidents occur due to technical breakdowns of cars.
