SOCIETY-BALKANS: Belgrade Roulette Takes Its Toll

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jun 24 2005 (IPS) - The deadly game of ‘Belgrade roulette’ played by the young, rich and bored is back on the streets after a gap of some years.

The rules of the game are bizarre but strict – a posh car or motorcycle is driven in the opposite direction to oncoming traffic, usually at night and with the headlights turned off.

Three young men died instantly a week back when their car smashed into a pillar at a junction on the Belgrade-Zagreb highway. A witness said the accident came in "a race with a red Porsche in the opposite direction."

A young woman is still in coma 30 days after she was thrown out of a speeding jeep that hit a tree on a boulevard in the posh Dedinje neighbourhood.. She was driving at 150 km per hour, going the wrong way.

In another incident, 22-year-old Branko Stanic is learning to walk again after his car was hit by a speeding Honda driving the wrong way.

Stanic who was hit by the car that simply appeared before him with its lights off says "it was pure horror." Branko’s knees were broken, while the young man driving the Honda died.

These incidents seem once again like the game played on the lawless streets of the Serbian capital in the 1990s. The drivers aimed at a speed of at least 140 km per hour with the foot off the brakes. Sometimes it was only one car, but often it was a race between several cars.

Branko and his family were the first to signal to the police that Belgrade roulette was back on the streets. But the police are being careful in officially saying as much.

"For the time being, we cannot confirm that Belgrade roulette is back on the streets," traffic chief Stojadin Jovanovic told IPS. "From what we learned in the investigations of some fatal crashes so far, there were extreme violations of the speed limit."

But he admitted there are indications of very high-speed races at night among impertinent and intimidating young men.

"The high speed races do exist, not only with strong cars, but also with powerful motorcycles. We try to prevent them, but these are cases of extreme violation of the speed limit," he said.

Such extreme violations of speed limit account for 57 percent of fatal crashes, Jovanovic added. The usual speed limit is 40 km per hour in cities and villages, 80 km an hour in city outskirts, and 100 km an hour on highways.

But the frequency and the similarity of crashes at certain spots, and the age of victims or survivors indicate that the game is back, other traffic police officials privately admit. They also say they have acted on tip-offs to prevent such races.

"There are favourite spots," a police official admitted, insisting on anonymity.

These are boulevards surrounding the large Kalemegdan fortress in downtown Belgrade, parts of the Belgrade-Zagreb highway passing by the capital, and Dedinje neighbourhood.

Hilly downtown boulevards and wide downtown junctions are also favourites, as is the tunnel leading from downtown Belgrade to the river bridges, and the bridges themselves.

The races are contracted several days in advance and are held mostly on Friday or Saturday nights from April to November, well-informed sources say. Winners collect bets in cash.

Belgrade taxi drivers confirm that the roulette game is being played on weekends.

"I heard that one is taking place last Saturday," a Belgrade taxi driver told IPS. "I stood at the pedestrian bridge over the (Belgrade-Zagreb) highway. There were at least five young men waiting for the game to start. The race began when a red Alfa Romeo roared from the nearby apartment blocks and sped down to cross the bridge (over the Sava river), which it did successfully, driving in the opposite direction. I just went numb, I could not believe someone would risk that."

There is not much the police can do, a police source said. "Maybe the new law on traffic safety will help us."

Serbia is due to adopt a strict law that will levy penalty points for driving above speed limits and drunken driving. Revoking a driving licence will become easier.

"But there is nothing a law can do," Belgrade university professor Zarko Korac told IPS. "This is a form of pathological behaviour in a society of distorted and devastated values. It’s not the poor kids who play Belgrade roulette. It’s the spoilt kids of the rich, the bored who are provided with BMWs or Porsches for their 18th birthdays."

A new rich class had come to flourish in the 1990s through smuggling of cigarettes, gasoline and everyday goods in breach of international sanctions. Propaganda turned ruthless criminals into war heroes, and they became the idols of the youth. Children of a new class of the new rich could now be mimicking the style of the1990s, analysts say.