Azerbaijan: Where the (Speed) Cameras Are Always Watching:
I mentioned this in my travel blog, but it is such an unusual phenomenon that I felt it deserved an article of its own. I drove around Azerbaijan for eight days and discovered something rather strange about the country’s roads: there are speed cameras everywhere. Now, I DO mean everywhere.
Watched on every road:
Not occasionally, and not just on dangerous stretches – everywhere. They are on main roads, side roads, country roads and really remote roads; at traffic lights, on corners, in bus lanes. You pass one, instinctively check that you are within the (ever-changing) speed limit, and a kilometre later you meet another camera, radar or piece of electronic traffic equipment. After a while you begin to wonder whether there is any stretch of road in Azerbaijan where you aren’t being watched.
…and yet the driving is chaotic
Despite this extraordinary level of surveillance, the driving itself can be surprisingly chaotic. Lane discipline is often poor and indicators seem to be regarded as optional. Cars pull across lanes, tailgate, overtake unexpectedly and make sudden manoeuvres that leave you wondering what the driver has seen that you haven’t.
Above all, cars speed up and then slow down dramatically as the next camera hoves into view: they brake sharply, pass it at the required speed; accelerate again. For someone trying to drive cautiously at a constant speed, it is incredibly frustrating. And where there are no cameras, all bets are off. I saw plenty of cautious driving interspersed with what I can only call ‘lunatic driving’ – overtaking at high speed on narrow mountain roads where continuous bends left almost no visibility. But then, there were no cameras on that stretch of road, you see.
You sometimes get the impression that the objective isn’t “I must drive safely” but “I mustn’t get caught.”
What cameras can – and can’t – do
There is some logic behind all this. Azerbaijan has a poor record of road accidents and deaths and has worked to improve it, with some success over the past decade. Speed cameras are almost certainly part of the reason. Speed is one of the easiest things to measure and control, and controlling it matters enormously: a bad driver at 50 or 60 km/h may cause an accident; the same driver at 100 km/h is far more likely to cause a fatal one.
But cameras can’t measure everything. They can’t measure judgement, courtesy or consideration for the driver beside you. They can’t tell whether an overtaking manoeuvre is sensible or suicidal, or teach anyone to anticipate what another driver might do. Drivers know they will be punished for speeding, but that doesn’t make them better drivers.
The authorities recognised the brake-and-accelerate problem years ago and introduced average-speed systems that measure a vehicle’s speed between two points rather than at a single spot. However, these are still rare – almost all the cameras I encountered simply measured the speed of passing traffic.
So, in very simple terms: poor driving + heavy speed enforcement = plenty of frightening driving, but fewer fatal consequences than there might otherwise have been. That is an oversimplification, of course – Azerbaijan has also improved its roads, junctions and traffic management, so it would be wrong to credit the cameras alone. But my conclusion is that the camera network has probably contributed significantly to making the roads safer in terms of fatalities, without making driving feel any safer or more pleasant. You can use technology to control behaviour, but it can’t necessarily change the culture that produces that behaviour in the first place.
Road safety or revenue?
I wouldn’t say I was a nervous wreck after eight days, but I have never been so conscious of my speed or watched my speedometer so closely. The annoying thing is that the system seems designed to catch drivers out, with speed limits changing constantly for no apparent reason, often on wide motorways. Which raises the question: is this about road safety or about revenue?
An Azerbaijani driver I spoke to had no doubt it was the latter. He told me that in the last fiscal year the government collected over $2 billion in fines – from a population of ten million.
And my own experience - despite driving ultra-cautiously, at speeds well below what I would normally do, in a careful and mannerly fashion that endangered no one, I still incurred three fines. That, apparently, is well below average. But for a tourist on his first exposure to such severe over-policing, it seems excessive. Not good for tourism, Mr. Aliyev.
The traffic police are still there:
One final point: The traffic police who were ubiquitous in the old Soviet Union have seemingly survived intact here, although with so much technology on the roads they mount fewer checkpoints and traffic stops than they once did.
Other former Soviet states have dealt with theirs differently. When Yushchenko was President of Ukraine, he sacked the entire traffic police force of 200,000 people, on the basis that they were of no use to the government: they operated like an independent organisation, harassing drivers for fines that invariably ended up in their own pockets or those of their superiors. Ukraine later re-formed its traffic police, but with extensive retraining and a clear line of accountability to senior police chiefs. Russia’s traffic police, by contrast, have never been reformed and remain a powerful force, although their wings have been clipped to some extent.
I’m not saying the traffic police in Azerbaijan are corrupt – I saw no evidence of that. I am simply reminding people that they are still there, so if you fancy trying to evade them, beware: back in the day they drove Ladas; nowadays it is 5 Series BMWs.
I intended to finish this article by saying:
Here, the cameras are watching – but it’s really the drivers you have to watch.
I’ve changed my mind. In Azerbaijan, the drivers do their best – it’s the traffic police and the government you need to watch.
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