Road Traffic Control Department

The Road Traffic Control Department (Russian: Отдел по регулированию уличного движения, tr. Otdel po regulirovaniju ulichnogo dvizhenija), abbreviated as ORUD (Russian: ОРУД), was the road traffic control,highway patrol and traffic law enforcement department of the Soviet Militsiya. It was in operation from 1931 to 1961, when it was merged with the State Automobile Inspectorate.

The number of traffic accidents in the USSR greatly increased at the beginning the 1920s.Moscow City Police recognized the need for general road traffic control, and in 1931 The Road Traffic Control Department (ORUD) was established. A special ORUD's department that handled the driver's licenses was opened as well. It also assigned license plates. A Member of Mossovet Boris Sokolov (Russian: Борис Михайлович Соколов) was appointed the head of the Department. Vasily Chugunov (Russian: Василий Сергеевич Чугунов) became the Senior Inspector. There were only 145 employees at first.

By 1931 the number of ORUD employees increased to 500. On 20 March 1932 the Council of People's Commissars released a statement "About the Centralized Accounting of the Accident Rate and Local Transport Accidents". Since then, the road accident statistics was officially calculated. The same year the first traffic lights and a position of a traffic guard were introduced in Moscow. The first highway patrol was formed in March 1933 and it consisted of 50 people.

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