Sunday, October 26, 2014

Dash Cams in Russia

    In Russia many drivers have cameras mounted on the dashboard of their car, called “dash cams.” These are popular for a number of reasons. Russian courts do not fully accept eyewitness accounts and prefer video evidence. Since Russia has one of the highest accident rates in the world, it is important that drivers have actual evidence of what happened. The Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev said bad roads and the “undisciplined, criminally careless behavior of our drivers,” were the reasons why Russians had so many vehicle accidents.
    Another reason for the dash cams is because many Russians do not trust law enforcement. They feel that they will take bribes and the real truth will not be heard. Even more troubling, there are insurance scams in Russia where pedestrians try to get hit or pretend to get hit by a car in order to collect insurance money. For all of these reasons, dash cams are very common in Russia.
    One positive result of this was that scientists were able to use the many dash cam videos that recorded the meteor over Russia in 2013 and use triangulation to figure out its trajectory.
Here are a few Russian dash cam videos:


Cows falling out of truck:

Sources:


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