Environment minister Simonas Gentvilas and editor-in-chief of Auto Bild Lietuva magazine Vitoldas Milius discuss the car inspections planned by environmentalists and whether severe fines will help in the “Dienos pjūvis” program of the tv3.lt news portal.
Vitolda Miliau, this topic has really attracted great public interest. Some are angry, curse, others support the order and praise it, what do you think about it?
V. Milius: It is normal that some think one way, others another, because there is probably no such absolute truth here. One truth is probably that no sane person wants to breathe dirty air or drive, see, feel behind a smoky car. I don’t believe there is a single person who would say that hatch
It means that some people absolutely, without any reservations support this project. If I have any comments, it’s definitely not for the idea, but for the project. The project started with a certain communication that scared people enough, because people live the way they live, drive with the kind of cars they have, and some of them are really very old in Lithuania, the Lithuanian park is old enough – 15 years, let’s say. Now the newly registered cars are a bit newer, but they too can have the same problems that have been identified here and will be checked.
main damn there were several: a newly appearing brakeman on the road, unknown to us, environmentalists, not the police, not something else. We know that if I’m a bad person, if I’m drunk, if I’m speeding, I can get pulled over and I know I shouldn’t. Now that I’m stopped by another institution and I don’t know what exactly I can be punished for because I don’t have it breathalyzer for the car, whether it is dirty or not, it introduced a little bit of such anxiety here.
Another thing that was at the very beginning – it is stated that the technical inspection will be taken away immediately, it is said that we are going to call the trawl almost immediately, we are towing. After that, the current plan added 48 hours to fix the car. 48 hours is short. This is because only a person who rides a scooter and knows nothing about cars can come up with the 48-hour rule, because you won’t be able to fix the car so quickly in a garage in certain cases <...>.
And one more nuance, that the technical inspection is canceled for not tightening one screw. This means that if that car pollutes and one drop of oil drips from it, then the entire inspection is immediately destroyed, even though maybe it was necessary to tighten that one bolt on the road for 3 minutes. This also disturbs people, as if it is an injustice, money, a fine, it is still necessary to waste time <...>.
Minister, 48 hours to deal with it, if it fails, the technical inspection is cancelled. Where does the logic for 48 hours come from, is everything okay with that?
S. Gentvilas: First of all, let’s not scare all road users. According to our remote measurements, approximately only every 40th car on the streets of Vilnius exceeds the pollutant emission rate, this is a conditional number. It’s definitely not a massive thing here.
And when that technical inspection will be destroyed, it is really a matter of discussion here. Again, there is a goal to have clean cars in the cities, this can be compromised by extending the time from 48 hours to 2 weeks or fines to get a warning the first time.
But basically the goal is to have cleaner vehicles on the streets. The experts and I are ready to participate in it, so even with the opportunity to check from January 1, well, we are still discussing, we are not yet starting street checks.
Those 48 hours have not yet been crossed out, can it still change?
S. Gentvilas: Yes, but, you know, there are a lot of people who write me personally, what’s the order, but not many people who write and say, that they fight for nature and my clean air. When the air is dirty, you won’t identify which car it is, you’re just walking down the street of Vilnius or another big city – the weather is bad, but who’s to blame <...>?
That system will calibrate at some point, proportional time will appear, proportional fines will appear, but we need to get out of that parallel world where we have cars that are technically out of order, smoke white smoke, have cut catalysts and they pass the technical inspection turning around technical inspection, and then participates in traffic for two years.
During these transitional years, we will surely find the optimal solution.
You start checking in May, so when will there be concrete decisions about time, about fines?
S. Gentvilas: We have such a conversation next week in the Seimas with the Environmental Protection Committee, the Law and Law and Order Committee, we will see what the proportional time is. Again, the intent is not to take away a means of employment or livelihood [automobilį]but we have to start talking about it and the problem of traffic pollution exists and it directly kills.
If climate change and emissions of carbon dioxide into the environment cause global processes, then pollution in Vilnius, the old town, shortens human life by half a year, because Vilnius is polluted, Kaunas too <...>.
Vitold, some members of the Seimas complain that environmentalists alone should not stop cars without the police, what do you think about it?
V. Milius: Well, that arrangement is not new, there were probably several such projects during the years and in those old days. Almost all of the time, environmentalists were working together with the police, and it is clear that people are stressed. Even after talking to his wife, she says that she is afraid of the policeman, although it is common for us that the policeman can stop. By the way, it’s not very common, I don’t really remember the stopping policeman, because that institution seems to switch to smart cameras and the person is not there.
We find it now the tree environmentalist, there may have been a bit of communication problems at the beginning, because people demonized the story that they were going to drive in the Labanor forest in the middle of the night, in the winter, with two children, some green foresters would stop them, take the car from him and he would have to walk to Vilnius. Well, you can invent and create such a fairy tale, although no one will do it, and no one will stop it.
But for people, for drivers, that stop is stressful and being guilty doesn’t know why, because when you exceed the speed, you know a little bit that you exceeded it, if you drive drunk, you also know that you drive drunk.
Here you may not know everything and, of course, there is a matter of communication. If there will be more such shows and Simon will tell how things really are and what the purpose is, that it is not the purpose of depriving everyone of technical inspections, those baubles will be less, but when there is not a lot of communication, then people come up with everything themselves.
And I’ve seen some videos, some shows, where people from the Environmental Protection Agency almost didn’t answer any of the questions normally, well, they just didn’t. A question was asked rubbed, rubbed, saponified and so it remained hung up. If we leave it like that, automatically a person will come up with an idea, then everyone quickly spreads that idea around and that’s how it turns out that those negative letters are received.
Watch the entire show at the beginning of the article.
Tags: Expert straightforward order breathalyzer check car pollution
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