Five hours of checks, from 5pm to 10pm, across the entire country. The result: 140 recorded violations among riders of bicycles, mopeds and motorcycles, eight criminal charges and another 156 violations of other kinds. This is not a statistic about offenders caught by chance - it is a picture of what happens on Macedonian roads every evening when nobody is watching.

Of those 140 violations, a full 102 come down to one single thing: riding without the mandatory protective helmet. Three out of every four riders stopped were sitting on a motorbike or moped bare-headed. That is almost three quarters of all sanctioned cases, over something that costs less than a tank of fuel and is the difference between a bruise and a funeral.

The operation was run by the Traffic Affairs Department at the Interior Ministry and covered riders of bicycles, motor-assisted bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles, tricycles and quadricycles. Two riders were found under the influence of alcohol. Criminal charges were filed against eight people under article 297-a of the Criminal Code.

The geography of the violation

The most violations were registered in the Strumica police region - 33. Then come Tetovo and the Mobile Traffic Safety Unit with 17 each, Kumanovo with 15, Bitola and Ohrid with 13 each, Veles with 12, Skopje with 11 and Shtip with nine.

The fact that Strumica sits almost three times above Skopje in a single evening is worth looking at closely. Strumica is not three times the size of Skopje. Either riding without a helmet is more acceptable as a habit in the Strumica region, or the enforcement there was more serious than in the capital. Neither explanation flatters anyone.

The Interior Ministry says the intensified checks will continue and appeals to riders to use protective gear and not to ride under the influence. The appeal is correct and predictable. But we have been listening to appeals for years, and a figure of 102 helmetless riders in one evening shows that an appeal on its own is not a measure.

The question left is simple: what happens to these 140 violations once the report is written? How many will end with a fine actually collected, and how many will stay as paper in a drawer? Because the rider stopped tonight without a helmet will get back on the moped tomorrow - and the only thing that will make him put one on is whether he genuinely paid the last time.