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Moscow Plane Crash Caught On Passerby's Dash Cam
acidradio writes "Yesterday a Tupolev 204 (Russian-made aircraft equivalent to an Airbus 321 or a shortened 757) overran the runway at Moscow Vnukovo airport and crashed into a nearby highway. A plane crash is always bad, but what makes this seem different is how well it was recorded. It seems like everyone in Russia has a dashcam, here is footage. A driver who just happened to be driving by on the nearby M3 highway (right about here on the map) is pelted by flying nose wheels and a row of coach-class seats! An accident like this has probably never been filmed so up close. We are getting better and better at recording accidents and disasters (whether by coincidence due to overuse of surveillance or maybe on purpose). What does that say about our level of documentation and recording of people's everyday lives? And what's the deal with dashcams in every Russian car?"
Seriously, Dash Cams are the best defense against scam artists.
Easy answer to this - I was working in Moscow all this year. If you have an accident, you HAVE to wat for the police to come to make an official report, (otherwise your car insurance will not pay out).
When they get there, the person with the biggest bribe gets the favourable report...
So, better to have a dashcam...
Dashcams provide proof of what happened in a culture full of corrupt law enforcement officers.
The dash car cams is because of a law that allows people to sue the driver if they get hurt. Lots of people pretend and pretty much jump in front of slow moving cars because its one of the easiest way to make money
In Soviet Russia, plane boards YOU!
The driving in Russia is absolutely horrible. That's precisely the reason why so many people over there have dash cams.
As a matter of fact, as with anything else, there are a number of compilations of Russian dashcam videos that show some pretty outrageous things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlxHPJAONpE
No wrecks in any other country have anything on Russia. Seriously.
Russian pedestrians diving under cars to try and get compensated for an accident.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c12_1349902324
If you watch enough of these videos like I have on youtube, it's a free-for-all driving over there. Signs and traffic lights are pretty much optional.
I've seen quite a bunch of those videos myself and yeah, it's amazing how EXCEEDINGLY bad drivers there are, it's just god damn horrible. And it's only slightly better when they visit Finland: Lappeenranta here in Finland is a city that's pretty well filled with russians and every time I have to drive there I dread at the sight of russian drivers. Been in many a situation where the russian driver just decides to swerve right in front of me, or pushes me out of the lane, drives straight through red lights and so on and so forth.
I can't say much about them as people as I don't know any personally, but I find myself wishing they were never given cars or driver's licenses.
Every Russian has a dash cam because the insurance company and courts there have a history of not paying out a dime unless you have proof. Where Americans seem to think in a "reasonable doubt" methodology from our courts, in Russia it's apparently "any doubt at all" and you lose. So if someone hits you while you're parked and they show up and say you ran into them you'd better have video or witnesses or something or no money for you!
Other countries seem to have systems that skew that way, and thus more dash cams (China, Taiwan, Korea), but not the quantity of videos. I think that's due to the bad Russian driving, there's simply more wild videos coming out of Russia than anywhere else!
Over at Jalopnik there is an entire section devoted to Russian dash cams. If you waste the next few hours watching them all it's not my fault!
Apparently, dashcams are as popular as GPS devices in Russia, and you can get a basic model for an equivalent of about 40 euros, and an advanced model is as pricey as an advanced GPS is (with nice features). And the reason to get one can be seen in Youtube, if you are pretty much run into by a car with government plates you better have some hard evidence that you were not the culprit. As the traffic is often worse than in southern Europe (where there is a lot of honking and hand-waving, even "pushing it through" but people are used to minor dents in cars in cities and they don't often care) compared to the fact that there is a lot of high-priced cars in Russia and insurance money is big factor, plus as an added bonus police can be corrupt and the one with biggest handout on the scene gets the money from the insurance because of the police report.
I live near a pretty busy skiing resort in Finland where there are a lot of Russian tourists this time of year. Most of them do drive responsibly. And I urge you to do so here abroad (we have a pretty decent police who can write accurate reports if there is an accident and are not for sale) as well as home. There is no rush here, just relax on the Sunday-traffic off the resort. Don't be a jerk in traffic, really.
Obviously to record that the crash of the landing gear into your car wasn't your fault.
Learn to love Alaska
this could have been a lot worse. Air Canada would have charged them a service fee for shuttling them to the nearest ground transportation.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Added what to the tragedy? The cam-driver didn't do any additional damage to anything, and the driver in front didn't lock up their brakes or turn the wheel, as far as I could tell. And based on US data, locked wheels stop much faster than the average American driver (why cars like Mercedes are adding brake assist, where a quick application of the brake triggers a stronger stopping force than requested because American drivers don't stop nearly as fast as possible in their cars, rarely beyond what you get sliding along on melted rubber.
Learn to love Alaska
The driver lost control because the car was hit by flying debris not visible on the dash-cam. After that he actually did a pretty good job of not making it worse.
If you watch it in slow motion, you see an intact jet fuselage disappear (probably into a ditch) and then see the results of it slamming into the other side with debris flying up and over. That was the real crash, not the plane 4 wheeling off-road after overrunning the runway. I assume there were some kind of arresting barriers but if those wheels were from the nose gear the barriers sure didn't do much. The moments before this video were probably boring with the plane simply continuing on past the runway. The final impact was the money shot. Another angle would have been Hollywood perfect but in real life you take what you can get.
The real question though is, did they fine the pilot for littering?
Considering the pilot was killed, no. A fifth person died so keep the jokes coming.
If you watch enough of these videos like I have on youtube, it's a free-for-all driving over there. Signs and traffic lights are pretty much optional
It's probably unfair to judge russian driving by video's uploaded to youtube. I mean if you record your driving 365 days a year and come across an idiot doing something really stupid on one day of that year, which days video is going to get put up on youtube? "driving to work. everyone behaving themselves. nothing eventful happened" is hardly going to get a lot of hits.
He didn't lock the brakes, he was hit in the rear passenger side with large debris. You'd have heard it in the video if you'd have had your sound on. It caused his rear end to skid to the left, so he steers into the skid to keep the car going relatively straight. Good work by the driver. After all that, hitting another plane part lying on the road doesn't even matter.
Damn. If the Fins say your a bad driver then you are. They know all about bad drivers.
Kind of like when the Mexicans have to tell you to calm down.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"I'd hate to have someone entirely at fault for hitting me try to claim contributory negligence on my part based on my own recorded evidence".
Well I hope you drive a pre 1980's car then, because if a fatality is involved the authorities will take a dump from your car computer which will tell all.
So you really don't have a reason to be paranoid, because your car's computer is there to rat you out anyhow.