Russian cars are now without airbags, ABS, and catalytic converters

In Russia, the safety requirements for cars have been significantly lowered. Because the high-tech components necessary for the associated engineering systems do not exist and the automotive industry is on the brink of a complete standstill. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has now signed a decree suspending most legal standards for new car registration until Feb. 1, 2023, the magazine reports the initiate. 

This means that airbags no longer need to be installed in the vehicles. And the Electronic Stability Program (ESP), which includes the Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) and other safety features, no longer needs to be present. “All airbags are made in, say, ‘unfriendly countries’. If you look at the design of all Russian-made cars, most of them are now equipped with two airbags.

The installation is now probably left to the car owners themselves,” explains Pyotr Shkumatov, coordinator of the Blue Buckets movement, the group has long protested with blue buckets on the roof against the trend of more and more wealthy Russians buying driver’s licenses to drive through the city with blue lights on.

There are no catalytic converters

But not only the security features are gone. In principle, the decree completely abolishes the emission standards. So far, the same euro standards apply in Russia as in the rest of Europe. Because just to meet the Euro 2 standard, the vehicle would have to be equipped with at least one passive catalytic converter.

However, until now these are not manufactured in Russia, but imported – and accordingly, these components no longer exist at all. Technically, cars basically fall back to the level of the 80s. Car expert Sergey Aslanian put it in a nutshell: “We will drive with Euro 0, like in World War II, when we drove with gas cars, ie with firewood,” he explained. Since at that time oil-based fuels were completely necessary for the military, wood gasifiers were used to power cars.