The key facts

  • The driver was stopped by traffic police while driving his twin brother's car; the protocol was drawn up against the car's owner.
  • The car owner was stripped of his license for a year and a half and fined 45,000 rubles.
  • The court overturned the decision and terminated the case due to “irremovable doubts about the person's guilt.”

How the protocol was drawn up against the wrong person

In Ufa, a court has overturned a decision revoking the driver's license of a car owner who was not behind the wheel at the time — his twin brother was driving. This was reported, citing court documents, by RIA Novosti; Gazeta.Ru retells the story..

What happened on the road

According to the case materials, the man was driving his twin brother's car. The traffic police officers who stopped him heard the driver give his own name, and he immediately clarified that he was not the owner of the vehicle, offering to call his brother to confirm this. He refused a medical examination for intoxication. As a result, the violation protocol was drawn up against the owner of the vehicle rather than the person who was actually behind the wheel.

The court's decision and its reversal

The court of first instance revoked the car owner's license for a year and a half and fined him 45,000 rubles. The defense appealed the decision, arguing that the brothers had been mixed up. A higher court overturned the ruling and terminated the proceedings, citing “irremovable doubts about the person's guilt”. In practical terms, this means the penalty has been lifted from the car owner, while the question of the actual driver's responsibility is not addressed in the materials described.

Context

Earlier, according to Gazeta.Ru, traffic police officers were already allowed to revoke drivers' licenses — against this backdrop, the case of the Ufa twins shows that the outcome of such measures depends on who exactly is named as the offender in the protocol.