Another fatal accident sparked a discussion in Moscow about the safety of one of the city's most important traffic axes.
On Saturday afternoon, a BMW slid into oncoming traffic on Kutuzovsky Prospect, which leads from the west into the center of the Russian capital.
The driver was killed at the scene of the accident, his passenger, the president of a motor sports club in the republic of Dagestan, died in hospital.
Friedrich Schmidt
Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.
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At the wheel of the BMW sat blogger Said Gubdenskij, who entertained hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube and Instagram with reports about his passion for fast cars, especially “M” tuning models from the Bavarian brand. In addition, Gubdenskij boasted of participating in illegal races in Moscow and published videos that document, among other things, a speed of well over 200 kilometers per hour. Gubdensky reportedly often drove without a license plate, even on his last trip.
Otherwise, speed violations are automatically recorded and tracked by surveillance cameras. Such a camera recorded the blogger's BMW pulling across the numerous lanes of the road, slipping and turning against the direction of travel. Passengers in two SUVs that the BMW raced into were injured. The cause of the accident is said to have been excessive speed. A speed of 80 kilometers per hour is permitted on Kutuzovsky Prospect. Serious accidents regularly occur on the road.
At the weekend, the list circulated in social networks that between 2015 and 2019 alone, 47 people were killed in traffic accidents and 427 injured on Kutuzovsky Prospect, much more than on comparable streets with separate lanes in the middle. Again and again, therefore, a median delimitation for the road is demanded, also now again on the Internet and on the radio station Echo Moskwy.
But when the capital's traffic authority made a corresponding attempt two years ago, it failed because of the FSO, the secret service that is responsible for the security of high-ranking civil servants.
Because on the median reserved for specially authorized vehicles between the lanes of Kutuzovsky Prospect, civil servants who live in a residential area west of the capital race to work and back.
The president's imposing vehicle columns always drive in the middle of the "Tsar's route" from Vladimir Putin's residence Novo-Ogaryovo to the Kremlin and back, which is then temporarily closed for them.