To the likely relief of 5,500 motorists every hour, highway crews 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 Klimichev, 23, a trucker hauling a container of furniture along the Russian capital's busiest highway Wednesday. "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 Road for an interstate highway.


There are no white stripes, for example, to delineate the Ring's outer two lanes or the shoulder on either side.


There are no service stations or rest areas, so drivers like Klimichev, who had pulled over to check his brake fluid, simply pull over to the side of the road.


But thanks to the $100 million upgrading, the Ring Road is no longer a nightmare of head-on collisions. A chest-high concrete divider now separates your car from oncoming traffic.


New signs and new lighting actually make it possible to figure out where you are going. It's easier to see the pedestrians, who still dart across the road, and easier to avoid hitting them in the dark.


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


Mayor Yury 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 inauguration ceremony, held at dusk in a brightly-lit roadside construction shed. Arriving in a second black limousine was another presidential hopeful -- Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. 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, recreation areas and overhead pedestrian crosswalks.


Because the Ring Road stayed open during the project, it was possible to compare accident rates on the old segments with the casualty rate on the new segments.


The improved sections had four times fewer accidents, according to Vasily Yuryev, chief of Moscow's Traffic Police.


Driving the new Ring Road is still tricky. As before, few drivers observe the absurdly slow 36-mph speed limit. Even more dangerous are the organized crime bosses who put flashing lights and sirens atop their imported cars and simply barrel past.