MOSCOW -- A traffic jam in this booming city of 11 million can be a miserable affair, a hope-crushing mess that materializes without warning and can trap drivers for hours.

But for Moscow's rich and connected, it is barely an inconvenience. Flouting the law, they slip through congestion by making wild turns, or putting flashing lights on the roofs of their luxury cars, or speeding on emergency lanes and even sidewalks, leaving a sea of ordinary drivers seething quietly in their wake.

Every so often, though, Russia's motoring masses find an outlet for this frustration. Right now, his name is Anatoly Barkov.

Barkov, a vice president of Lukoil, the country's largest oil company, escaped with minor injuries from a crash two weeks ago in which his Mercedes S500 sedan collided with a Citroen hatchback. Two women in the smaller car, a prominent obstetrician, Vera Sidelnikova, 72, and her daughter-in-law, Olga Alexandrina, 35, were killed.

The authorities immediately blamed Alexandrina for the crash, accusing her of veering into an oncoming lane during the morning rush hour. But her family challenged that account, triggering a public outcry against the driving habits of Russia's privileged elite -- and the readiness of corrupt police officers to look the other way.

Moscow radio stations have devoted hours to discussion of the crash, bloggers have railed against Lukoil and called for a boycott of its gas stations, and an Internet video in which a local hip-hop star raps that Barkov will burn in hell has gone viral.

"We're not just talking about this specific accident, but about the style of driving of such people," said the rapper, Ivan Alekseyev, known as Noize MC. He said he produced the video to draw attention to what he believed to be a police coverup.

Relatives of Sidelnikova and Alexandrina said officers at the crash scene refused to give them a copy of the accident report as required by law. After getting the runaround for days, they appealed to the public for help and justice, arguing that it was far more likely that Barkov had turned into the opposing lane because he was on the traffic-clogged side of the road heading downtown.

A group of prominent writers and actors backed the family and urged President Dmitry Medvedev to intervene. "People who drive cars with special license plates and special flashing lights have become a permanent, unpunished threat for ordinary drivers," they said in an open letter, adding that police had changed "from guardians of the law into servants of high-ranking bureaucrats and the wealthy."

Police came under attack again this week after a widely publicized incident in which officers ordered several motorists, including a pregnant woman, to park across a highway -- and stay in their cars -- to block a fleeing suspect. The fugitive slammed into the vehicles, broke through and escaped. No one was injured. "We could have been killed," one driver said in a YouTube video. "Is it really the case that our lives are worthless in the Russian state?"

The public's outrage in the Barkov case follows a string of other crashes involving the rich and powerful, and it has been fueled in part by statements from police and Lukoil that have been less than sympathetic and at times contradictory.

Police initially said no surveillance cameras covered the stretch of road where the crash occurred, for example, but later released a video showing the location near the time of the crash. A dark car with a flashing light can be seen pulling into the empty center lane that divides traffic on many Russian roads and is reserved for emergency vehicles and state leaders. But a billboard obscures what happened next, and police said it wasn't clear whether the car was Barkov's black Mercedes.

After being treated at a hospital, Barkov, 62, told reporters he wanted the crash "investigated objectively and without bias." But bloggers have criticized him for waiting a week to express condolences and denounced Lukoil for saying that even if Barkov was culpable, it would not offer compensation to family members, including Alexandrina's baby girl, Nadia.

Many have also questioned the police assertion that a chauffeur was driving the Mercedes, noting that Barkov suffered more-serious injuries in the head-on collision than a passenger who was not hospitalized and may have been a bodyguard. Others have scrutinized Barkov's official biography, which lists corporate security among his duties and says nothing about his career before 1987, prompting speculation he may have ties to police and a background in the security services.

Igor Trunov, the lawyer representing Sidelnikova and Alexandrina's family, said the outpouring of support was encouraging. "It gives us hope that there will be a fair investigation," he said.

Three witnesses have come forward and contradicted the official account, said Sergei Kanayev, head of a car owners association that is helping the family. Two saw the Mercedes pull into the center lane illegally, while the third confirmed that the Citroen had remained in its lane, he said.

Kanayev said whoever was driving the Mercedes was probably trying to avoid traffic and didn't realize the center lane was dangerously narrower than normal ones. He measured its width at the crash site to be about 5 1/2 feet. Mercedes S-Class sedans are nearly seven feet wide.

"Police corruption is the main obstacle for safety on our roads," Kanayev said, noting that Russia's traffic fatality rate is several times that of the United States. "There's this privileged class that drives as it wishes and pays bribes. Their maneuvers are just awful."