A Russian man was pulled over on Monday and found to have an expired licence. It turns out that was just one of a whopping 2,000 traffic violations.
In video footage shared by the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, an official says road patrol officers in Moscow were stopping vehicles to do document checks.
The unnamed 34-year-old driver was stopped and asked to get out of his BMW. When he refused, one of the officers in the video smashed his driver’s side window.
“The man was asked to get out of the car but he wouldn’t, so he was removed,” the official says in Russian.
Later in the video, the man can be seen in a building talking to a police officer, who sorts through papers that are presumably his various violations.
At the station, the video says, it was discovered that the man also had 184 unpaid fines.
He was ordered by an Odintsovo City Court of Moscow judge to serve an administrative arrest for seven days, which will be followed by a decision on how he will be charged for his non-payment.
“An Odintsovo town judge in Moscow region handed the driver seven days in detention, after which he will be held accountable… for not paying the fines,” the Moscow police said in the video.
The Moscow police spokesperson didn’t elaborate on the driver’s huge list of traffic violations.
Driving in Russia is hazardous, according to the World Health Organization. The Global status report on road safety 2013 estimated that more than 26,500 people are killed in road traffic crashes in Russia every year.
Former president Dmitry Medvedev blamed the “undisciplined, criminally careless behaviour of our drivers,” along with poor road conditions, in 2009.
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