Many travelers wondered why along some roadsides there were trees, stalls and gas stations, and along others there were crosses, crumpled steering wheels and plastic wreaths in memory of those killed on the highway. Is it some kind of attack, carelessness of drivers or something wrong with the road?
ENCHANTED ROADS
The master of sports of the USSR in rally Dmitry Belyakov first told me about the enchanted places on the roads.
At one time, he worked as a tester at the MADI test site near Zelenograd. Somehow he and his colleagues were given the task of finding out why accidents constantly occur on one of the sections of the road.
The testers studied the track, as they say, far and wide. That time there was no mysticism. It turned out that in one of the sections, closer to the edge, the track had a rise. The result was a tilted movement. As soon as the driver increased the speed, the car was thrown into the oncoming lane. At the same time, there were no warning signs about a dangerous section on the road. As soon as the cover was leveled, the accidents stopped.
The authorities of the Moscow region also acted without regard to otherworldly forces, when the number of accidents on the Lyubertsy-Lytkarino section of the highway began to go off scale. The locals called one and a half kilometers of the road passing through the spruce forest the road of death (there were so many crosses and wreckage of cars - traces of road accidents).
The authorities did not begin to look for the reasons, but just before entering the “road of death” they installed a sign “Dangerous section of the road”, put new asphalt and several “speed bumps”. The number of accidents dropped sharply.
Promotional video:
BLACK TRAFFIC LABELS
No matter how you point at anomalies, we are in 114th place out of 137 in terms of the quality of roads in the annual ranking of the World Economic Forum. According to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, we have an average of about 200 serious accidents per day. Some with such dire consequences that they break the heart.
But, oddly enough, accidents often happen in ideal areas that are visible for several kilometers, where there are no sharp turns, zones of limited visibility, steep descents and ascents. It is on them that the black marks of the accident are compactly concentrated - crosses and wreaths on the roadside.
In different parts of Russia there are deadly spots, where emergency situations occur not only with suspicious regularity, but also with a terrible outcome. How can one explain the fact that cars are constantly diving into the water on the Yauza embankment in the capital? Or why are there so frequent accidents between the 8th and 10th kilometers of Kutuzovsky Prospekt, not far from the turn to Minsk Street?
Local residents also consider the 205th kilometer of the Moscow-Kholmogory highway to be enchanted, where at least two heavy clashes occur every month. Rumor has it that there used to be a cemetery here.
But is this the point? And without mysticism, it is clear that immediately after a sharp turn, the road seems to bend to the side of the road. And if it rains heavily, then the car is simply brought into a ditch.
Traffic police officers of the Nizhny Novgorod region are concerned about frequent traffic accidents in the Romanovsky forest, which is located near the town of Gorodets. What they are connected with is not clear. But here drivers are fighting like damned: 7-10 accidents per month, up to a dozen deaths annually!
The number of accidents did not decrease even after road services installed bumpers, road signs and traffic lights.
THE SECRET OF THE VLADIMIRSKY TRACT
The section of the M-7 highway in the Petushinsky district near Vladimir is also called a cursed place. Traffic accidents happen here often, there are many victims. It was here that the Ulyanovsk Neoplan bus once collided with KamAZ: 13 passengers of the bus were burned to death. The famous actor Alexander Dedyushko died in these places.
When the Vladimirsky tract passed here, along which thousands of prisoners were driven to hard labor, many fell dead. They were buried on the sidelines.
In Petushinsky district Isaac Levitan painted one of his most famous paintings - "Vladimirka".
Let me remind you that in early October, at a railway crossing in the town of Pokrov, in the Petushinsky district, a fast train from St. Petersburg to Nizhny Novgorod tore apart a bus with labor migrants from Uzbekistan that had stalled on the tracks. 19 people were killed.
And yet traffic police officers have their own view of all this mysticism: “There is nothing mysterious on our routes. Unfortunately, there is, first of all, inattention of drivers, non-observance of the speed limit, ignorance of road markings or malfunction of the vehicles in use."
FATAL STRANGE
One way or another, but to the opinion of experts who point to anomalous zones, traffic police are trying to listen. According to research data, up to 40% of road accidents occur on these sections, although their length is no more than 5% of all roads. In addition, some accidents are too strange. Some drivers begin to tell that their car in good condition suddenly stops responding to the brake pedal. Others - that they seemed to be paralyzed, so that even the steering wheel cannot be turned. Still others, being absolutely sober, stop noticing a warning sign or traffic light …
Often, the observations of the traffic police and the versions of the researchers coincide. A noteworthy fact: back in the early 1970s, the traffic police of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs came to the conclusion that the accident rate on some sections of the road is 2-4 times higher than the national average. It was then that a paradoxical situation was noted: a significant part of unexplained accidents took place in areas with good visibility and a decent asphalt surface …
Scientists explain: on the surface of our planet there are zones that, by their physical properties, stand out from the surrounding space. In such zones, the impact of natural anomalies on humans is especially noticeable. Some begin to behave inappropriately: suddenly there is unexplained anxiety, fatigue, blood pressure rises, heart rate increases, legs cramp, electronic devices do not work well or do not work at all.
FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED
Our ancestors knew about such anomalies, who took this into account when choosing places to live. For example, special attention was paid to the behavior of domestic animals - "where the sheep lay down, build a house." Therefore, most of our ancient cities and villages, and especially temples and monasteries, are located very well.
Ancient people also knew "damn places" in which it was impossible to settle. Twisted, hollow, withered or rotten tree trunks and branches have been a sign of a bad place for centuries. If anything was built here, it was only dungeons and pits for criminals.
The influence of abnormal zones on road safety has long been recognized abroad. Since the early 1980s, many years of detailed and rigorous scientific research on this topic have been carried out in the USA, Germany, Canada, Austria, France, England and Switzerland. They fully confirmed the assumptions that anomalous zones could pose a fatal hazard on the road. And they need to be warned about.
By the way, we also have such a warning. It is located on the Kiev highway. The statistics of terrible accidents on this seemingly unremarkable section of the road are really above average. However, there is no scientific explanation for it yet. Only three kilometers of the road in front of the Kievsky village, if you go in the direction of Moscow. At a permitted speed of 90 km / h, the section can be covered in two minutes, but this time is enough to leave a memory of yourself in the form of a wreath on a tree trunk.
After the appearance of an information board about the impending danger, they stopped dying in an accident here. Experts believe that such shields are necessary on the Ural federal highway and the road from Moscow to Samara, where there are kilometers of sections where tragedies occur with alarming frequency.
Recently, President Vladimir Putin signed a federal law that establishes the concept of an "emergency area". This law obliges regional and local authorities, as well as owners of private roads, to annually approve lists of hazardous areas and develop measures to eliminate the causes and conditions of road accidents.
According to the document, an accident-dangerous section of the road is one where “during the reporting year, there were three or more accidents of the same type or five or more accidents, regardless of their type, as a result of which people died or were injured”.
In short, it is not necessary to look for answers to road riddles. It is enough to mark stable dangerous places with special signs, place “speed bumps”, road barriers on them, and - you see, the abnormal accident rate has disappeared!
Vladimir Gondusov. Photo by Y. Tretyakova