From what I've read tonight, I've decided I'd rather deal with I-4.

So, apparently driving in Russia is, well, interesting..... To get a license, one must memorize the answers to a whopping 800 questions, but once you get on the road, all of that goes out the window.

The internet tells me that rarely does one encounter that yellow line down the middle of the road. Some drivers take that as license to ignore the concept of lanes in some cases.

It's all about budget. Paint costs money, so why use it to draw lines on a road? The people in this video ignore them anyway.

Russian road rules violation


Plus, it costs money to have traffic cops. (Quite frankly, I think we should ship some of the ones in Polk County over there. They're very concerned about meeting their monthly ticket quota.)

Here's a passage from the article I read:

One GAI officer explained it this way: "Russian law requires us to find witnesses in order to issue a citation. With illegal passing, the only witnesses are the motorists themselves, all of whom are long gone moments after the violation has occurred." Others offer the rationale that it's too dangerous to chase every offending motorist through narrow city streets. "Better to let them get away with minor infractions than to needlessly endanger others," one source contended. "The GAI chase the serious offenders, and that's enough."

On February 5th, 1792, Empress Elisaveta Petrovna declared that Russians would drive on the right side of the road. Of course, that doesn't make LHD cars less expensive than imported RHD vehicles. Although Russians drive on the right side of the road, many drive cars suited for the left side of the road. Wikipedia claims that in the far eastern regions, such as Vladivostok or Khabarovsk, RHD vehicles make up to 90% of the total. This includes not only private cars, but also police cars, ambulances, and many other municipal and governmental vehicles. When talks of banning RHD vehicles from the road bubbled up in 2005, car owners blocked the streets of major cities in protest.

Here's a video of crashes in Russia. Some of them are pretty crazy.

Russian Traffic Chaos


In my quest to find the perfect traffic video, I also found this little doodle. I found it amusing....

Russian Street Curling