Right to Right: The Risk of Driving or Banning Right-Hand Drive Cars
RIA Novosti recently delighted us with the news: Russia has decided to assess how dangerous it is to operate right-hand-drive vehicles. Well, it’s not the first time the entire half of the country east of the Urals has been shaken by such initiatives. The difference is that this time the western part has also gotten a bit tense.
I’ll say right away: nothing terrible has happened yet, and there’s no talk of banning the operation of right-hand-drive cars. Not yet. Until 2028, specialists from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and FSUE “NAMI” will study the operational characteristics of such vehicles, and based on their findings, proposals will be made aimed at reducing risks on the road. What exactly those risks are remains unclear. As does what there is to research for two years. I suppose, if you want, you can study anything, although cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side have been driving around here for at least thirty years now, and in that time you could have studied absolutely anything. Well, God be with them, let them research — maybe it really is interesting. What interests me more is another question: why is this necessary?
Of course, reducing risks on the roads is a good goal. In some ways, even a noble one. But how can you reduce them by studying the operation of right-hand-drive vehicles? Obviously, in the Far East, where such cars are the majority, they will be the ones getting into accidents. But in the western part of Russia, the number of accidents (well, fine — risks) involving right-hand-drive cars is minuscule. What general conclusions can be drawn from isolated examples, I find hard to say.
What I can easily notice, though, is that in my ordinary courtyard in far from the most prestigious district of St. Petersburg, there are already two nearly new right-hand-drive cars parked. And you know what’s most interesting? They’re not Hondas or Toyotas, but Mercedes-Benz C-Class models. And more and more Audis with the steering wheel on the wrong side are driving around the city, as well as BMWs of the same kind. They’re being brought in, of course, from the Japanese auctions we’ve known about for a long time, and lately — via Korea, because Japan has imposed serious restrictions on us. However, nothing is impossible, and for a Russian person, hauling a nearly new Mercedes from Japan through Korea is a sacred matter. Even if it has right-hand drive. Besides, some of the simplest “Germans” (of course, with mileage) end up costing not much more than our Vesta. And since the same Mercedes-Benz models for Japan are assembled in the same place as those for Europe, there’s no difference in the cars (except the steering wheel, of course). So for many, the choice is obvious: you can’t spoil a good “German” with just one detail.
Of course, we’re talking about inexpensive “Europeans.” A wealthy person can afford to bring a left-hand-drive G-Class or an Audi A8 from South Korea, because when you’re spending 10-20 million rubles on a car, you want a proper steering wheel, and the extra cost for it doesn’t matter much to such buyers (if only we all lived like that).
In short, while our Ladas were only competing with various Toyotas and Hondas, you could turn a blind eye to right-hand drive. Because the moment you opened your eyes, Far Eastern residents would pour concrete into their Zhigulis in protest and express nasty separatist sentiments. But now that our domestic auto industry has barely started breathing freely again (yes, yes, that’s irony — both “domestic” and “breathing freely”), right-hand-drive “Europeans” are flooding in. There are risks, of course. Not exactly operational ones, mind you, but they still need to be minimized.
