Diplomats as traffic offenders: speed limits, parking bans, hit-and-run accidents – that doesn’t seem to bother many of them. In the past year alone, members of the diplomatic corps in Berlin received 9,973 reports of traffic violations!
This is shown by the as yet unpublished Senate response to a written request from CDU interior expert Frank Balzer (57). Accordingly, 2550 diplomatic vehicles with special license plates are currently registered in the capital. On average, each of them was targeted by German law enforcement four times in 2021.
► Most common violations: speeding, wrong parking. Most frequent polluters: from Saudi Arabia, Greece and the USA.
However, members of the diplomatic service are not only on the streets of Berlin at breakneck speed, they also often disappear from the scene of the accident: In a total of 46 accidents up to the end of November (December data are not yet available) with 15 minor injuries, they simply fled the scene in 28 cases Dust.
Accident escape rate: 60.86 percent! The problem: Because of their diplomatic status, they enjoy immunity, which means: prosecution excluded!
As a result, Berlin lost 201,098.50 euros in warnings last year. Nearly 10,000 reports of traffic offenses. In 2019 there were twice as many.
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“Here it can be clearly seen that the activities of members of the diplomatic service are also severely affected by the corona pandemic,” said Balzer to the BZ
What is frightening for the CDU politician, however, is that the proportion of those who are believed to have escaped from an accident has “almost consistently been over 60 percent since 2009”. “The Senate should once again urgently appeal to the diplomatic missions to improve this situation,” demands Balzer.
Because: “Although the drivers go unpunished with immunity, this can lead to considerable difficulties for those involved in the accident for insurance reasons.”