According to the RA Law on Ensuring Road Traffic Safety, the following is considered an emergency situation:

Explanation

A situation arising from the action and/or inaction of a road user and/or a traffic controller, in which a real danger of a traffic accident is created.

The definition has two elements. The first is the source: someone's act, or the failure to do what was his duty. The second is the outcome condition: the danger must be real, not hypothetical and not a remote possibility — that is, at that moment a collision must genuinely have been possible. The key point of the question is that the list of sources includes both road users and the traffic controller.

The legislator deliberately included the controller in this list, because he too is fallible: a wrong or contradictory signal, or abandoning a busy intersection mid-task, can create exactly the same real danger of a collision as a driver's carelessness. If the definition covered only road users, responsibility in every incident would fall automatically on the driver, even when the driver was following an incorrect instruction. Note that inaction matters as much as action — failing to signal, failing to give way, or failing to lift off the accelerator in time all fall within this definition.

• This definition covers only road users and removes the traffic controller from the list of sources of an emergency situation, whereas his error too can create a real danger of a collision.

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