In 2006 police bosses pompously announced the launch of an unprecedented program to be implemented with the support of the World Bank due to which all road signs would be renovated, new road markings would be drawn and “spiteful” traffic policemen would no longer jump out of shrubs to penalize remiss drivers. Instead, under the program, cameras would be installed everywhere to watch the traffic instead of GAI, a Soviet-era abbreviation for the State Automobile Inspection.

The reform was intended to deliver a shattering blow against such a social evil as corruption on the roads and transfer everything happening between the driver and the traffic policeman onto the plane of civilized relations.

However, few things have actually changed and while road inspectors have become more polite, the basic means of extorting money are still widely practiced.

Director of the “Achilles” Center for the Defense of Drivers’ Rights Eduard Hovhannisyan says it has been more than four months that his NGO has been realizing a project as part of which drivers, in the event of a road accident or a disputed situation on the road, may phone the organization and call its specialist to the scene in order to get free consultation and all necessary legal assistance.

Hovhannisyan says in the period from February to May the Center received 843 calls, or 8-9 calls a day on the average. Of these 843 calls, 226 immediately concerned so-called corruption risks, in other words situations when traffic policemen were barefacedly extorting money.

Cases were registered when traffic policemen demonstrated a brazen ignorance or deliberate concealment of traffic rules or acts of legislation concerning traffic laws.

As example: GAI are fond of removing the license plate of a vehicle illegally parked. In its first four months “Achilles” has reported 57 cases of illegal removal of license plates.

Armenia’s law on traffic safety adopted in 2005 says, however, that unscrewing license plates is allowed only when a vehicle does not have a sign confirming that it passed an annual technical inspection in due time or if the validity of the sign has expired.

Further, if a traffic cop removes a vehicle’s license plate, he is obliged by law to issue the driver a 10-day temporary plate. In all other cases the law requires that the offender should be notified by mail that he has been penalized. There is hardly a motorist in Armenia who has been penalized for inappropriate parking this way.


It is common, too, for police officers to confiscate a driver’s license if the driver argues that his or her rights have been violated.

The law, though, expressly states that a license can be taken in only a few cases, such as: running a red light for the third time or speeding for a third time, or refusing to obey an officer’s demand to stop.

In order to have a license reinstated, a driver must pay about $570. Facing that sum, the driver might favor accepting the traffic officer’s “negotiation” of settlement.

Another driving plague is when police tow cars to an impoundment, as in that case it will cost them a lot of nerves and even more money to get their vehicles back. But Article 19 (prim) of the above-mentioned law says that a vehicle can be impounded only if the driver does not possess a driving license or a document confirming that his vehicle has passed a technical inspection or if these documents are fake.

In reality, though, drivers in Armenia face impoundment on the whim of GAI officers.

Twelve cases of illegal delivery of a vehicle to the impoundment have been reported
during Achilles’ project. In eight cases those vehicles had Georgian license plates. Driving a car with a driving license issued by a foreign country is a “valid” reason for Armenian traffic police to flag a car down and start extorting money from an unlucky visitor.

But still in 1997 Armenia joined the International Convention on Road Traffic which it ratified on February 8, 2006. Point 5 of Article 27 of this Convention says that national driving licenses of more than 160 countries that have acceded to this document are valid in the territory of the participating countries.

And what about “breathalyzers”?

The law is very clear on this procedure – in the presence of two witnesses a motorist blows a so-called sobriety tube and if the orange light of the device changes to blue, the driver should be taken to a specialized medical establishment for an examination. Breathalyzers have not been seen in Armenia since Soviet times and the presence of alcohol in the driver’s blood is determined by a traffic policeman by what he suspects to be the smell of it. In these conditions the required presence of two witnesses becomes a non-rule too – an unlucky driver is dragged to the specialized medical establishment where he or she also has to pay 1,000 drams ($2.50) for the examination for which no fee is required under law.

In all such cases, human rights specialists say the situation is unlikely to change until drivers themselves learn to defend their rights by referring to corresponding legislation.