On September 21, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. Employees of the traffic patrol service battalion of the traffic police department of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee, together with their families, will switch to bicycles on September 22, the Car-Free Day, and ride through the streets of Vitebsk. This will be a kind of call to the city residents to give up their "iron horses" at least for one day, said Alesya Seregina, head of the propaganda and agitation department of the traffic police department of the Vitebsk Regional Executive Committee, to a BELTA correspondent. How to deal with their four-wheeled friend, the traffic patrol service employees have already demonstrated today. On Freedom Square in Vitebsk, with the help of BRSM activists, they wrapped three cars in wrapping paper, thereby calling on drivers to join the European campaign on September 22. On Car-Free Day, traffic police officers, together with inter-district environmental supervision departments, will conduct raids to identify and suppress the participation in road traffic of vehicles whose toxic substance content in exhaust gases exceeds the established standards. Unattended vehicles will not be ignored by the State Automobile Inspectorate: they will be identified in parking lots and courtyards, and then this information will be transferred to the local authorities. In 2010, the Vitebsk region had almost 366 thousand units of vehicles, of which the personal car fleet amounted to 250 thousand. According to environmentalists, this number of vehicles emitted 117.9 thousand tons of pollutants into the atmosphere. The "Car-Free Day" campaign was first held in France in 1997. At that time, only about 20 cities participated in the event; in 2001, over a thousand cities in 35 countries officially joined the movement, and Belarus has also become a participant since 2008. Now the annual campaign is held in 40 countries in Europe and other continents. On September 22, 2011, the annual international campaign "Car-Free Day" is being held in Belarus, organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, regional committees, district and city inspectorates of natural resources and environmental protection. -0-

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