Dear fellow hikers and mountain lovers,
I'm interested in your opinion on the proposed law on restricting vehicle driving in the natural environment listed in ("News Archive")?
I was very pleased to receive the news that a long-awaited draft Law on Driving Vehicles in the Natural Environment is on its way. The fact is that the law affects a large number of violators and for that reason alone it's a very sensitive topic. Therefore, the idea that a comparison was made and we follow the legislations of neighboring countries seems principally okay, but I have some reservations about the success of the new law in practice. I see the problem mainly in the Slovenian "national sport", which is breaking regulations, further encouraged by completely ineffective supervision by the state authorities designated for that. Therefore, I would wish for an even more systematic regulation of the legislation that would protect the natural environment from destruction by selfish and environmentally unaware drivers of motor vehicles in the natural environment.
I propose that the legislation should also reach into the area of sale and marketing of those motor vehicles whose use the proposed law addresses. If purchase was allowed only to target user groups who are entitled to use motor vehicles in the natural environment (see Article 4 of the draft law), the number of snowmobiles, cross motorcycles, off-road quad bikes, .... would be significantly reduced. With clear rules of rights to (non-)purchase, the impact of unaware future owners on the destruction of the natural environment would certainly be reduced too.
That it's by no means a negligible number of vehicles in private ownership of "adrenaline enthusiasts" is evident already from the fact that if we look at small ads, e.g. on avto.net, we find several thousand ads for snowmobiles, cross motorcycles and off-road quad bikes.
Lack of appropriate legislation is shown already in that there are quite a few ads for snowmobiles taken at known locations of our beautiful Pohorje.
My second proposal would be mandatory registration and insurance of vehicles. I don't see a reason in what e.g. snowmobiles with 100 or 200 "horses" and ability to reach top speed even over 200 km/h differ from other vehicles (e.g. mopeds reaching up to 45 km/h), so they wouldn't need to be registered. This would also enable identification of the driver on the terrain, as despite the prohibition of driving "special motor vehicles" in road traffic (Article 96 ZVCP), the practice is such that in winter time some snowy roads are used as a polygon for driving. Adrenaline encounters with oncoming snowmobiles can thus be experienced every winter e.g. on the upper part of the road Lovrenc na Pohorju – Pesek (Rogla).
With all this, the question of the meaningfulness of planned future state subsidies and reliefs for purchase of environmentally friendly vehicles also arises, but on the other hand the worst polluters with two-stroke engines and noise levels that are completely unimaginable in automotive technology (120 dB noise against usual 80 dB for passenger cars) are legally sold. And such technology is found in vehicles intended for driving in the natural environment!
I believe that in our beautiful Slovenia finally the time is coming when we will stop pretending what is right and what not and we will create appropriate social consensus regarding that. We must decide what we want for the future: are "crazy adrenaline pleasures" of a handful of arrogant modern upstarts more important to us or pristine nature that we could pass to descendants. In current conditions it's nothing unusual that deceitful initiatives, supported by traders' lobbying, keep appearing, in the sense: if the state allows sale of vehicles (and it suits it very much to collect taxes), then buyers/owners of vehicles have the right to use them (unlimited?).
Well-meaning people have already cleared this in their heads regarding that, and otherwise it's noticeable that awareness regarding nature protection in Slovenia is rising.
Best regards to all lovers of healthy recreation and pristine nature,
Marijan