Under a new procedure for monitoring traffic compliance that is currently under review by the Ministry of the Interior, inspectors may rely on the organoleptic method to identify vehicle malfunctions. In plain terms, issues can be detected by sight, hearing, and smell: oil leaks, brake squeal, the presence of a Check Engine light on the instrument panel, and similar indicators. This framework follows from paragraph 85 of the updated document titled the Procedure for the Monitoring of Compliance by Road Users with the Requirements of the Legislation of the Russian Federation on Road Safety.
“The technical condition of the vehicle is checked using an organoleptic method or through specialized technical means to verify that the vehicle complies with the requirements established for its use by the basic provisions governing vehicle authorization and the duties of officials to ensure road safety, and/or the technical regulations for the safety of wheeled vehicles. If the vehicle undergoes a technical inspection during the inspection, information about the inspection results is recorded in the Unified Automated Information System for Technical Inspection.”
What changes could arise on the roads once the new Supervision Procedure takes effect? There are concerns that inspections might become more frequent or onerous, giving inspectors more grounds to complicate the lives of drivers. Some fear a return to the past pattern, while others hold a more cautious view about how things will unfold.
In commentary, a legal professional notes that for many issues, the visual assessment remains a valid basis for noting malfunctions that do not require precise quantitative measurements. Visible problems that are obvious and do not demand a detailed examination can still be recorded, or simply noted in the protocol, particularly when captured on video and attached to the case file. When a malfunction requires confirmation by a technical method, however, purely visual evidence cannot serve as the sole proof. The draft of the new regulation does not intend to change this standard. If a malfunction is established only visually, without a corroborating technical assessment, that scenario provides a clear pathway to cancel fines rather than uphold them. This perspective underscores the ongoing distinction between observable signs and those that demand instrumentation for verification and is presented here as a reasoned interpretation of how the new rules might operate in practice [official commentary attribution].