In the Soviet Union you not only bribed police, but the grocer, the mail man, your child's principal, and the list goes on.

Fixed.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble#Economic_role

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortage_economy

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Товарный_дефицит_в_СССР (http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js...)

[1] As opposed to less useful goods like political books with titles along the lines of "The Proceedings of the Nth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", which were plenty, and which you sometimes had to buy by the dozen in order for the salesperson to agree to sell you a few more desirable books.

Once, it's funny. When this shit happens to you on a regular basis, it's tragic.

http://www.angelfire.com/mn/nn/Knightrider.html (No Big Thing)

or maybe it was just random drunks...

1. Article is mostly based on CHP community posts and comments. Their data is strongly skewed toward scary stuff (which is the only type of content that is posted there)

2. There are several categories of horrible things that can happen to you, but mostly you can avoid them. However, sometimes you can't, and sometimes it's batshit crazy. For example, couple of months ago, some road crash with some heated argument happened in St. Petersburg. One of the participants of that argument died from five knife wounds to the chest. Investigative Committee alleged that (sic!) the man committed suicide (google Grigory Kochnev). You can't make this shit up.

3. Russians themselves are mostly fine, but corruption is on super-high levels and these people are not sent as alien agents from space. Saltykov-Shchedrin, great Russian satirist, wrote more than a hundred years ago: "If I were to doze off and re-awake in a hundred years and someone asked me what is happening in Russia, my answer would be unhesitating: people are drinking and stealing".

4. If you are to visit Russia as a tourist, you are reasonably safe. But I'd never advice anyone to open business in or relocate to Russia. Unless you want to deal with truly kafkaesque things every single day.

Anecdotally speaking, I haven't witnessed things in their "The Russian Dash-Cam Supercut" video even once. I can confirm that lots of people disregard rules if they think they can get away with it, though. Things like not lowering speed before the yield sign or going full speed through the crossing on yellow traffic light account for majority of the accidents involving two cars. Crossing the road in the wrong place causes most pedestrian deaths.

Statistically speaking, we've got 3-5 times more fatalities than EU countries per capita and about 1.5-2 times more than in US, from what I've found. Some of these accidents happen due to weather and poor road maintenance, but you can't really blame the weather much, since the situation is much better in neighbor Finland.

Sounds like Boston...

http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_som...

http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_som...

I thought you were saying that sociopathy from the top can effect the entire society. However, you have specific mechanisms in mind having to do with the workings (or not) of law enforcement.

When the Russians would bust drug dealers, they would take their drugs and give them to addicts who informed on them. Pretty crazy stuff.

I've had a friend of mine in Texas give me specific (un-solicted) advice on how to have a gun for protection in case of road rage. (Involving what features not to get, because you don't really need them and they make juries think you're a gun nut itching to shoot someone.)

Also in Texas, once I got out of the car at an intersection so I could let the people in the car ahead know they didn't have their headlights on. I told my friends this had happened, and they all told me, "That's a good way to get shot!"

I've also been advised to have a steel pipe in the car, since it's useful as a "cheater bar" to get more leverage on the lug nut wrench as well as for self defense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_rage

A 2007 study of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas concluded that the cities with the least courteous drivers (most road rage) are Miami, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston. The cities with the most courteous drivers (least road rage) are Minneapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Seattle, and Atlanta.[11] In spite of this, in 2009, New York, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Atlanta and Minneapolis/St. Paul were rated the top five "Road Rage Capitals" of the United States.[12]

In other words, any big city. And (from what I can tell), deadly incidents are not that common.

But that entirely misses the point. Not going outside after dark is like wearing a tiger repelling necklace. See? No tiger attacks, it keeps me safe.

And what kind of area was this? Part of my surprise about Russia is that it sounds like this kind of thing happens everywhere.

However, I've lived here for about 20 years now, usually in poorer areas, mostly due to cost factor. I have generally felt safer in some of the worst urban areas in Houston, than some of the moderately bad urban areas in other places, like NYC, Baltimore, Chicago. Outside of certain areas like Forum Park [2], and the central swath of the 3rd Ward [3], I always felt the most unsafe in the suburbs. (However, my short time living in Forum Park was a rather agreeable one as long as I was in my area of the complex that everyone knew me.) But, on our side of town, its not uncommon to be surrounded by vertical gunfire on the holidays - so, there is that, I guess.

Road rage? Well, I've been known to be a pretty aggressive driver, and only had one instance of it happening. It was probably my fault though, I really shouldn't have driven up on the sidewalk to make the turn after honking at him. =) We often like to joke that the reputation, deserved or not, that everyone else is armed here keeps everyone a bit more civil.

[1] For those not from Houston, Telephone road has a very, erm, "colorful" history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_Road

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_Park,_Houston

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Ward,_Houston

Well, once someone shot a rifle through their house, and they discovered the bullet holes and the bullet lodged in the back wall the next morning. However, the husband works in criminal justice, so they hear about a lot more violent incidents than most people.

> And what kind of area was this?

Suburban Houston.

As the driver the camera is a mixed blessing, if you cause the accident, you've created your own evidence against yourself. If you the owner, it makes it harder for the employee to lie about what occurred if they were in the wrong.

Also, the same type of people who posts pictures of their food on Instagram loves to post videos how they passed a Ferrari from a green light or dodged Putin's motorcade etc.

It makes so much sense now!

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s0XH5YA2mo

Those dash cams have been there for years, they're the gift that keeps on giving!

Can anyone here recommend a brand/model?

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js...

I've installed these in taxis. They have outside/inside cams (to make sure the occupants aren't pointing a gun at the driver). They have a wireless 2.4ghz wireless upload to upload the files when the car gets to home base. And they show telemetry, speed, gps, and impact/vibration.

They are for commercial purposes so they are probably out of the price range of most people ($400 I think).

Lots of people in this country Just. Flat. Out. Lie! Context is high stakes? Think you can get away with lying? Then lie!

jaquesm commented that a fish rots from the head. Cancers can also start in the body.

I think all the brands are "random Chinese company of the week."

One thing that escapes my understanding: people do not affraid to beat somebody to death, but they can't figure out how to break a dash-cam and destroy the evidence?

If anything, will leave you with a broken face and a $600 camera missing.

What are some of the feature people looking for in a dash-cam and/or a dash-cam service?

I use this solution in a non-car surveillance application but, admittedly, there's an x86 Mini-ITX board running Linux involved.

Edit: phrasing.

Definitely an interesting future preview.

The premise of TFA is not that "because of dashcams people on russian roads did become savage".

The premise of the article is that thanks to dashcams there's some hope that people become more civilized.

Your sentence make it sound like dashcams are the issue that turned russians sociopathic. It's not the case: now we have visual proofs but it has nearly always been like that...

PS: Clearly, dash-cams in Russia are primarily used to deal with specific problems mostly related to corruption / scams. But, they also catch interesting videos like this meteor.

DO Jalopnik and anminal NY share the same owernship, and thus just recycle articles?

EDIT: Jalopnik has republished with permission at the bottom..

http://dx.com/c/735

Features include GPS, SD card recording, auto loop recording, auto-record when powered, stop when unpowered, accelerometers, or compass. They tend to be about $100 shipped anywhere in the US.

In the late 90s I drove around with my JVC GR-DVM70U miniDV camcorder on a tripod lashed into my back seat.

No I can have 1080p video from my cellphone mounted on a windshield mount. I have lots of video but it's pretty limited due to storage limitations I choose the highest quality because my reasoning is if something goes wrong there's no point in have video that's so bad that everything is blurry. A video overlay of speed, brakes, compass, GPS would be nice too.

I'd love to have a small camera always on with the option to dump the video to a safe storage area such as Dropbox or several places.

With an Android phone, this might even be scriptable using something like Tasker. Set it up to automatically start the streaming application as soon as the GPS records you travelling a speed over a certain limit, say 10 mph/20 kph.

I thought about UStream but I am lucky to get a signal even here in the capital city; GPS or cell.

Maybe a RaspberryPi, a small webcam and solar panel.