According to Armenia’s traffic laws, violations for tinted glass in car and other transport vehicles can only be issued when the glass in question is measured to see just how tinted it is.

In practical terms, this means that a traffic cop would need to be equipped with a special piece of equipment to measure such a thing. (By the way the same law holds true for measuring the speed at which a car is travelling; i.e., a hand-held radar device or speed camera installed along a highway.)

Surprisingly, no traffic cops in Armenia are equipped with such devices. Consequently, the law remains on the books only and can’t be applied.

Furthermore, Traffic Police Chief Arsen Galstyan rules out the procurement of such devices in the future due to financial reasons. Such equipment costs too much.  Nevertheless, Galstyan found the money to but twelve patrol motorcycles costing US$ 350,000.

So, on what basis, are expenditures considered justified or not?

Those who drive around in cars with tinted windows belong to a variety of social classes in Armenia. The bulk, however, own expensive cars and have influential friends and relatives in high places. Such contacts allow them to avoid getting ticketed for traffic violations. They are above the law.

Even if traffic cops were to one day be issued such devices, it would only be the average Joe who would get ticketed.

Now, if the traffic police were more resolute in handing out tickets, they’d be forced to fine almost all Armenia’s MPs and other government officials, oligarchs and their family members, the requisite 50,000 AMD for riding around in cars with opaque tinted glass windows.

Armenia’s elite wouldn’t be too happy if this democratic ticketing process were to one day materialize. Members of this socio-economic stratum wish to remain hidden from public view. They’ll ride around town in fancy cars, drawing the stares of gawking passersby, but anonymously.

Thus, maybe the reason the cops aren’t buying such devices isn’t financial but more a case of not sticking their noses where they don’t belong. They’d rather not open up a Pandora’s Box of unwanted trouble.

As to the argument of the police that speed cameras allow them to better monitor driver adherence to traffic rules and thus decrease road fatalities, some 110-120 people are killed in road accidents every year in Armenia.

We can state with a good degree of certainty that most are hit and run accidents that occur at night. The drivers, sitting in their dark cubicles, just can’t see the hapless pedestrian crossing the street.

Photo: news.am