Priests join efforts to improve road safety in Russia

MOSCOW, December 3 (RIA Novosti) - Traffic police and Orthodox priests in the Central Russian region of Penza have joined efforts to improve traffic safety and curb the high rate of road deaths, a popular daily said on Wednesday.

Instead of being fined for violating traffic rules, drivers will be offered a sermon by an "on-duty" priest who will be serving along with officers as part of a campaign launched in Kuznetsk, a large town in the region, as of this month, Novye Izvestia reported.

The Orthodox Church "has taken a bold step" toward those shunning church services and religious practices, the paper said.

When stopped by police, offending drivers are invited to have a conversation with a priest.

"The results have surpassed all expectations," a senior traffic police officer, Sergei Logov, told the daily. "We already can say that traffic accidents have declined by 30%."

Cooperation between traffic police and the Church in preventing road accidents in Russia, where road deaths and drunk driving are far more common than in Europe, dates back to 2000, when priests in western Russia's Voronezh Region gave lectures on the basics of Christian morality at driving schools, the paper said.

A priest in Tyumen drove through the Siberian city during the UN Global Road Safety Week in April, reading prayers through loud speakers and calling on drivers to observe traffic rules.

Authorities have considerably toughened punishments for traffic violations this year, and stepped up control over traffic police work in a bid to curb corruption.

The Interior Ministry has said that 20,992 people died and about 200,000 were injured in car crashes in the country in January-September this year, reporting a decline of 12% and 9.4%, respectively, on the same period of last year.