Finally, a Break on Moscow’s ‘Road of Death’ : Russia: A $100-million upgrade has made survival easier on the Ring Automobile Highway around the capital.

To the likely relief of 5,500 motorists every hour, highway crews Wednesday finished nearly a year of improvements on the Moscow Ring Automobile Highway, making an outing on that infamous 65-mile “road of death” somewhat easier to survive.

“I feel safer driving now,” said Mikhail Y. Klimichev, a 23-year-old trucker hauling a container of furniture along the Russian capital’s busiest highway. “To me it looks pretty much like an American interstate that you see sometimes on television.”

Well, not exactly. No American driver could possibly mistake the six-lane Moscow Ring for the Santa Monica Freeway.

There are no white stripes, for example, to delineate the Ring’s outer two lanes or the shoulder on each side. There are no service stations or rest areas, so drivers like Klimichev, who had pulled over to check his brake fluid, simply park on the road.

But thanks to the $100-million upgrade, the Ring is no longer a nightmare of head-on collisions. A concrete divider now separates cars from oncoming traffic.

New signs actually make it possible for drivers to figure out where they are going, and a kilowatt of new light on each pole--planted every 132 feet on the median--helps people read them at night. Another plus from all that pinkish glow: It’s easier to see the pedestrians who still dart across the road, easier to avoid killing them in the dark.

Last year 230 people died on the Ring, nearly four victims for every mile of the bypass that encircles this city of 9 million. With 1.5 million registered motor vehicles, Moscow is becoming as feared for its traffic as its gangland killings.

Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov, an ambitious politician who is keenly aware of his city’s disorderly image and the complaints of its burgeoning car-owner class, launched the highway improvement in January with local and federal funds. Crews worked round the clock to meet his Dec. 1 deadline.

The mayor called his project “a creative new achievement in the building of a new Russia” and outlined its second stage, featuring a fourth lane on each side, recreation areas and overhead pedestrian crosswalks.

“The highway will become our business card, which we will not be ashamed to show to the West,” said Maj. Gen. Vasily A. Yuryev, chief of Moscow’s traffic police.

Because the Ring stayed open during the project, it was possible to compare accident rates on the old segments with those on the segments already equipped with median dividers and better lighting. The improved sections had one-third the number of accidents.

Driving the new Ring is still tricky. As before, few drivers observe the absurdly slow 36-m.p.h. speed limit. And those who do don’t always move to the right, posing hazards for most others, who clip along at 50 or faster, weaving in and out. Even more dangerous are the mafia bosses who put flashing lights and sirens atop their imported cars and simply barrel past.

But Yuryev dreams that the spiffed-up highway will change all that.

“A road is like your house,” he said in an interview. “If it is old and dilapidated, your behavior is the same; you spit on the floor and drop cigarette butts. But when you are in a comfortable, tidy house, these ideas never occur to you.

“I think that motorists will change this road into a road of politeness and mutual respect.”