Ban on import of American cars will not affect Kazakhstan residents

New technical rules limiting import of certain cars to Customs Union (CU) countries will have no effect on Kazakhstan residents, head of Kazakhstan Independent Drivers Union Eduard Edokov told Tengrinews.kz. According to him, the common technical rules at the territory of the CU will mostly effect the Russian market. “I don’t see any terrible consequences of these rules. In general, we will face no changes,” Edokov said. He explained that only two points of these rules affected Kazakhstan. “We have banned the ‘right-handed’ cars long time ago, and the share of such American cars as Cadillac, Chrysler or Lincoln with red direction lights is not that large,” the expert said. It is not that difficult to find European analogues of the cars aimed for the U.S. marker, but made in other countries, like Infiniti or Lexus. All they need is a change of direction lights. The third point of the technical rules is ban for ‘wrong lights’. “The thing is that the light of the headlights has to be directed slightly to the right to lighten up the sidewalks and road signs. ‘Americans’ do not have this bend: their light spot is even and symmetrical. But the number of cars with such headlights is not that big in Kazakhstan,” Edokov said. Small effect of the new technical rules is also explained by the fact that the market of import of used card is “almost dead”. “After the discount regime ended it became unprofitable to import used cars. Because they were no longer much cheaper than the new ones bought from official dealers. And the new cars will comply with the technical rules by default,” the expert said. According to him, American cars are not popular in Kazakhstan market because of expensive maintenance and spare parts. He supposed that “there is a possibility that companies offering a change of headlights for the fans of American cars are going to emerge, thus bringing them into compliance with the standards.” Meanwhile, according to the expert, red direction lights do not play a critical role in road safety. “The U.S. is the country with the most number of cars in the world and, nevertheless, they have no problem using the red direction lights,” he said. The rules are introduced because of the Russian influence, and Russia, in its turn, is following European requirements. ThIs brings our rules to having much in common with the European ones. However, “this is not only the issue of safety, but also unification of legislation and standards,” Edokov said. Earlier Tengrinews.kz English reported that limitations on import of certain types of cars will be introduced in the Customs Union countries in June 2012. Full ban is planned for import of “wrong hand drive” (right-hand), “wrong lights” (incorrectly set headlights) and “wrong direction lights” (red direction lights) cars. This regulation is clearly stated in the technical rules for Customs Union countries. By Vladimir Prokopenko