From January 9, 2026, fines for violating the rules for transporting children in cars have increased in Russia. For individuals, the amount has increased from 3 thousand to 5 thousand rubles, for officials and legal entities - doubled. The most significant fines are provided for self-employed taxi drivers: they were equated to officials, and now the fine reaches 50 thousand rubles. For legal entities - 200 thousand rubles. The traffic police have stepped up inspections.
According to the traffic rules, children under 12 years of age cannot be transported in the front or rear seats of a car without a child seat. Stanislav Shvagerus, Head of the Center for Competencies of the International Eurasian Taxi Forum, emphasizes that due to the new fines, taxi drivers will now be reluctant to agree to transport passengers with children. After all, the fine for them for the absence of a child seat will be 50 thousand rubles. Auto journalist Maxim Kadakov agrees with him.
The biggest problems will be in taxis - if taxi drivers start refusing to transport passengers with children more often. Self-employed taxi drivers are fined as officials.
Amendments have already been made to the taxi law, obliging car parks and aggregators to provide taxi cars with child seats. But they have not yet been adopted. With all classes of seats, a full set for taxi drivers may be too expensive.
In Russia, child car seats are classified according to the ECE R44/04 standard into 5 groups according to the child's weight: group 0 (up to 10 kg, 0-6 months, carrycots against the direction of travel), group 0+ (up to 13 kg, 0-1.5 years, carrycots against the direction of travel), group 1 (9-18 kg, 9 months-4 years, in the direction of travel with belts), group 2 (15-25 kg, 3-7 years, with belts or standard belt in the direction of travel) and group 3 (22-36 kg, 6-12 years, boosters with Isofix or standard belt).
