In Russia, life is a highway
It is known as the “special highway” — a wide, flat road, with a lane down the middle, that links the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence in the pine woods, 23 kilometres outside Moscow.
Reserved by law for emergencies, the median lane is used mostly by Russia’s wealthy and privileged to bypass traffic. To have access to the lane has become a status symbol, the main currency in Russia today.
But the road, which runs through Kutuzovsky and Novy Arbat avenues, is special in another way, too. Unlike most multiple-lane highways in Russia, this one has no safety barriers to separate traffic flows and discourage pedestrians from being on the road. It is one of the deadliest thoroughfares in the city, according to police reports and traffic experts.
At least five deaths in accidents on the highway in 2017, and two more this year, were related to the lack of a median barrier, according to the reports. One was Sergei V. Grachyov, a traffic policeman and 32-yearold-father of two, who was standing in the middle of the road and died on the scene.
To some, the existence of the special highway without its safety barrier tells a story in microcosm of today’s Russia, where a culture of privilege defines society.
“This is a small mirror that reflects much wider problems in Russia,” said Mikhail Y. Blinkin, the country’s top transportation expert.
Russia has an elaborate culture of the so-called “ponty”— slang for a system of symbols and behavioural patterns that telegraph status. Sergei S. Teplygin, 35, is an avid student of the culture, of which he says the special highway is a prime symbol.
“I know this culture well,” said Teplygin, who owns a tour operator in St. Petersburg. “It is a part of my life.”
Teplygin runs an online community of a few dozen enthusiasts who cruise around Russian cities, looking for luxury cars with special licence plates that are violating traffic rules as if to demonstrate their untouchable status. People in his group take pictures of the cars and upload them online. His online forum has a dedicated thread about the special highway.
“You cannot understand how cool you are before you drive in the middle of this road,” Teplygin said, sitting in a burger restaurant. “Spotting this is like sports for us.”
The highway was built in the 1950s to link the Kremlin with government residencies west of Moscow. Along the road are grand Stalinist buildings, constructed for members of the Soviet elite. The median lane was reserved for government cars in the beginning, too, but the traffic was much lighter at the time and so there were not as many accidents.
Today, the road reflects the hierarchy that organizes life in Russia into a top-down structure.
Traffic gets fully blocked for cars carrying Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Only certain cars with special licence plates are permitted to use the middle lane, and violators are swiftly moved aside by the police, say advocates for traffic safety.