F1 driver tries to slow Moscow down

By Steve Rosenberg BBC correspondent in Moscow

What I'm about to do isn't for the fainthearted. It's unpredictable. It's dangerous.

It's a drive through the centre of Moscow.

Driving in Moscow is a terrifying experience

Driving me is Natasha. She admits she's often terrified in her car.

One look through the windscreen and you can see why. Lorries swerve in front of us without warning.

I see a whole line of cars performing illegal U-turns, and coming perilously close to oncoming traffic. Driving in Moscow should come with a government health warning.

But none of the drivers I can see - Natasha included - is even wearing a seatbelt. Breaking the rules seems to be the only rule of the road.

RUSSIA'S WORSENING TOLL 2000 - 29,000 deaths 2001 - 31,000 deaths 2002 - 33,000 deaths Source: Russian Interior Ministry

Then Natasha tells me something which makes me want to get out of the car.

Like many Russians, she says, she got her driving licence before she could even drive. Just by smiling at the examiner.

All her friends, she adds, paid bribes to get theirs.

"Nowadays everyone is busy," Natasha explains. "People don't have lots of time to pass their exams, to visit driving schools, to learn and have driving lessons. It's easier to pay."

Sometimes I'm running late, I would love to drive fast, but if it's not allowed I can't Ralf Schumacher, campaigning for Russian road safety

But the cost of cutting corners is immense: more than 100,000 crashes each year in Russia.

The roads here are among the most dangerous in the world, and are getting worse. You're five times more likely to be killed in a traffic accident in Russia than in the UK, 2002 figures show.

So how can Russian drivers be persuaded to drive more carefully?

In Moscow, they've come up with an unusual solution: hire a Formula 1 racing driver.

Ralf Schumacher is not the most obvious icon for safe driving. The F1 star is more at home driving up to 200mph on the racetrack.

But this week he came to Moscow to tell Russians to take more care on the roads.

"I just think a city is not a race circuit," Schumacher told me. "So even if you want to drive fast on the roads, you can't. It's the same problem for me.

"Sometimes I'm running late, I would love to drive fast, but if it's not allowed I can't."

Try telling Russians that. The drivers I spoke to out on the Moscow roads weren't rushing to mend their ways.

"Schumacher should drive around Moscow," one driver told me, "Then he'd see you can't drive here by the book!"

If you try to drive in Moscow according to the rules, they will put you in a lunatic asylum Natasha

Another Muscovite explained that what we he liked about Schumacher had nothing to do with safe driving - it was his speed!

Natasha's a big fan of Ralf Schumacher. But even she thinks his safe driving initiative is going to get stuck in the pits.

"If you try to drive in Moscow according to the rules, they will put you in a lunatic asylum. It will be a disaster for you. You'll never get to where you want!"

It's mafia shoot-outs and terrorist attacks which normally give Russia its reputation as a dangerous place. But it's out on Russia's roads that the real risks lie.