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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?"
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...
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!
And - it has regrettably to be said - in a culture full of batshit-insane drivers. Even President Medyedev has gone on the record as stating that the Russian Federation has a lot of very poor and excessively reckless drivers.
Someone once told me that in Russian the words for yield/give way and surrender are identical and Russians surrender to nobody. Don't know if that's true. Not sure I want it to be....
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Russian pedestrians diving under cars to try and get compensated for an accident.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c12_1349902324
Seriously, Dash Cams are the best defense against scam artists.
Or to prove that you weren't the culprit. Have a look at these videos, taken from my own dashcam in San Jose, CA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BgkCUbeuck
This is my wife driving. Watch the grey SUV on the right lane at 00:09.
Or the "best" one I ever caught: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9g7H0-NelI
Skip to 00:50 for the action. You can clearly see the red car turning left on a red light. After the accident I provided first aid until CHP arrived (none of the injured had life threatening injuries). I lived close to the accident site so I drove home and burned the 1080p video on a DVD and gave it to the police.
Two months later I get a call from the insurer of the red car. Apparently they were unaware of the existence of the video: "Are you sure you saw that the light was red? Are you really really sure? Really??". So I answer "I got it on video on my dashcam". "Oh, ok, thanks -click".
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
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!
The Roadhawk is the best implementation of a black box camera I have seen. It has enough on-board backup power to write the necessary EOF so that the actually crash video isn't corrupted (that's where the dod-tec apparently fails). It stores incident (accelerometer triggered) video files in a separate folder so that aren't eventually written over. It creates 60 sec. standard MP4 video files that can be played anywhere, yet those same files when read with Roadhawk's Windows software also show accelerometer graphs, speed of travel, and GPS maps. "Incident" files get written as 20 sec MP4 files with the triggering incident at the 10 second point in the file. Yes, they sell to US customers also.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Its a typical swear word, used similar to how we use "shit" or "fuck". Other common ones are "yo moyo" "yob tvoyu mat" "pizdetz" and "kazul". Last one means literally "goat" and you shout it at other drivers who cut you up and stuff while making a variety of hand signals.
Driving in Russia is a fun game, but not for the faint of heart. Generally any drive of more than a kilometer or two around a city will enable you to see an accident or three.
If you are in an accident it usually takes several hours for the police to arrive, which is just lovely when the temperature is -20 or -30.
A previous poster mentioned that whoever gives the bigger bribe gets the better report, and its pretty true. Most road police will accept bribes, even though there was a big purge against corruption in my city a few years ago, things got a little better after that. Having a car video is a definite good idea.