Dash-cams: Russia’s Last Hope For Civility And Survival On The Road (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Dash-cams: Russia’s Last Hope For Civility And Survival On The Road (2012)

animalnewyork.com

147 pointsgeorgecmu117 comments

Here is a quick story about Russian police from a few years ago. This should give you an idea why a dashboard camera is not an option, but a necessity. My mother was in Russia visiting my uncle (her brother) in Krasnodar 3 years ago. He picked her up at the airport and they started their drive back -- about 2 hours away from the city. As soon as they got on the highway, they noticed a civilian sedan on the side of the road. The car started moving as they were approaching it and when they were within a few yards it veered right in front of them, causing them to chaotically cut into the adjacent lane. A few moments later a police car comes out of some corner and pulls them over. By this time the other car that cut into their lane is obviously gone. They cops out of the car and tell them that they've stopped them for reckless driving. My uncle explains the situation and tells them that he's meeting his sister for first time in years and would like to just safely get her home. The cops tell him that he can pay them an X amount of rubles now without worrying about making the drive back to the city to pay the ticket. When he agrees, they give him an outrageous bribe amount. He quickly gives them a number significantly lower. The cops tell him, literally - "let's flip a coin." Both picked a side of a coin and they ended up paying the smaller part of the bribe. This whole situation sounds more humorous than anything. They used pull better stunts back in early 90s. Now the situation with police is slightly more regulated, but it's still just as corrupt as it's been since the collapse of Soviet Union.

> but it's still just as corrupt as it's been since the collapse of Soviet Union

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

They still bribe principals and teachers. It's expected you give gifts.

We used to bring apples to school for the teacher in America, but never thought of it as a bribe.

So just like India now, got it.

Russian here. That's probably just what you or your family did because my parents didn't have any need to bribe people on your list.

Why on earth would anyone bribe a mailman?

So you get your mail and your packages in one piece, unopened and on time?

-:) (Not to knock twice ?)

Psst, younglings. He's referring to this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman_Always_Rings_Twice_...

I mailed a package to Russia about 5 years ago. Recipient had to pay a bribe to get it.

He probably just wanted to avoid paying customs duty.

In India postmen also can gauge the contents of the letter or document. For example, they can recognize US college acceptance letters for students trying for further studies. Many of them will then ask for gifts for delivering the good news.

yes the mailman! Here's what happen when you don't "sweet the deal" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1pUm_ApNtU

So they don't steal your mail?

Actually, in Soviet Union you did not have any reason to bribe any of them.

> Actually, in Soviet Union you did not have any money to bribe any of them.

Fixed.

That's not right at all. The people of the Soviet Union had the money through most of the country's history; however, they often couldn't easily exchange that money for useful, quality goods like food, kitchenware, furniture or cars [1] without the proper connections and bribery. Bribes were often (perhaps mostly) not payed in money, either.

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.

Interesting. I will admit I was going shamelessly for a laugh there.

> This whole situation sounds more humorous than anything.

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

Apologize for any grammatical mistakes. Typed this up as my lunch was coming to an end. If it wasn't already obvious, the person driving the civilian car was another cop, as both my mother and her brother found out later from someone who ran into the exact situation before.

Very ironically, when I was reading your story, the first thing that came to my mind was a Knight rider episode (No Big Thing) as there was also a somewhat similar trick pulled in that episode... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0620860/

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

My russian friend made me believe the only reason for those cameras was that some random guy would jump in front of your car on the express lane and then sue you for running over them.

He joked. This doesn't work with the Russian court system.

It works in the Chinese court system, unfortunately. I guess we just don't have the laws to allow these yet.

He did have plenty of youtube videos as proof :)

or maybe it was just random drunks...

Wasn't corrupt before the collapse? :)

Looks a bit like cops in Mexico pulling surfers from California: you need to bribe but you can discuss by how much... And explain them you need to keep a few $20 so you can pay the next cops ; )

Russian highway police actually tells cops further down the road that you paid up, so you rarely get charged twice on the same stretch.

Russia sounds like a pretty scary place, to be honest. Is it really as bad as this makes it sound? How does a whole country get to be so sociopathic?

This is a complex question.

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.

So is the article just picking out a few isolated incidents and painting a completely unrealistic picture of driving in Russia?

I realize that I'm just throwing more anecdotes into the "NOT DATA" bucket here, but the last time I visited Russia I was driven around by my grandfather and uncle. It was probably one of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced on the road, and I've had a tire blow-out in a Ford king-everything truck, as well as losing power-everything in the same truck, both times going 70+ mph on a highway.

What specifically made the driving in Russia so terrifying? Was it the kind of things the article was talking about, or something else?

I never saw anyone trying to pull a scam, but my impressions - and this was about a decade ago - were of a Road Warrior type environment. The distinction between road and sidewalk was a mere suggestion, traffic signals were the equivalent of someone shushing you in a library, and lanes - what lanes?

It's not isolated, but it's not happening on everyday basis too.

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.

'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'

Sounds like Boston...

I can think of at least two retired guys from the UK who like living here in Russia.

A fish rots from the head.

Reminds me of these reddit comments about Russian girls:

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

Keep that sexist crap contained on Reddit, don't spread it around here, sexist.

Wow, I must've really hurt your feelings in the other thread. Delighted.

I'm not sure how these comments have anything to do with the way Russia is being run these days.

"How does a whole country get to be so sociopathic?"

Consider me dumb but I still don't get the relation with Russian girls. I know quite a few of them and they don't strike me as particularly sociopathic. If you mean to say that such generalizations are not applicable then yes, of course not everybody in the country is like that, but at the same time I doubt you'd see young people throwing themselves in front of cars in order to be able to sue the drivers in many other countries. And that kind of behaviour has its roots in how the country is run, and most Russian people would agree with that. At least, my Russian friends do. People with skills in demand abroad leave in droves, the Russian mob is firmly in control and they can only be that way because the authorities are about as corrupt as they come. Compared to other countries that have managed to get rid of the so called communists former Russia and its component states have it worse than any of them.

> Consider me dumb but I still don't get the relation with Russian girls.

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.

Is this meant to be sarcastic or serious?

Not meant to be entirely serious, but I do think that seeing lots of sociopathic behavior in society does affect interpersonal behaviors.

Um, perhaps. And what exactly does this have to do with Russian girls?

Oh sorry. Thought they were part of society.

I remember watching some reality COPS show with John Bunnell and they went to Russia to follow some of the detectives there.

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

That's a great inventive to turn informer! It's perfectly logical, in a certain horrible kind of way.

Well, some people think the same about the US from stories they hear.

That's fair, and that's partially why I'm asking. I know many have the impression that the United States is incredibly dangerous, to which I would say that's only really true in very specific areas - generally the poorest areas where people are desperate. This sounds really widespread, though. I've never heard of people in the US carrying around weapons purely in case of road rage, for example.

> I've never heard of people in the US carrying around weapons purely in case of road rage, for example.

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.

Personal anecdotes? How about some real numbers?

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.

I've heard "that's a good way to get shot" used to describe just about every activity in just about every part of every large city. Either it's not true, or I'm doing it wrong because nobody ever shoots me.

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

Not all shootings are fatal.

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.

Hm, fair enough. But how often do your friends actually get attacked? Is it really a reasonable fear for them? I've never been there myself so I might be completely wrong, but my impression of Texas is that the culture there is more paranoid than necessary, and unusually preoccupied with the idea of lethal self-defense.

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

The real trick to understand is that the culture is very diverse here in the larger cities. (I live in a very much urban, and fairly poor part of Houston, the SE side of Downtown.) There are just about as many people who would chafe at the idea that anyone would even own a gun as there are that own several. My perception is generally that the pre-occupation with self defense that people observe is not an urban trend. All of that is anecdotal and worth what you paid for it =)

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

> But how often do your friends actually get attacked?

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.

I guess the question is whether Russian really need dashcams so much, or whether they are just overreacting.

In Russia it's hard to say, but in the U.S. I recommend that if you operate a commercial vehicle that you install one. If you operate a business and have people driving for you, you can review the footage and get rid of the problem employees before they cost you a million in insurance losses. After installing a system for a transportation company reviews of the tapes showed that 75% of the drivers were talking on their cell phones. They had a company meeting and showed a compilation video of all the phone video, even though it was now against federal law to do so. After that point drivers stopped using the phone while driving.

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.

Doesn't this mean the camera was pointed toward the driver and not the road?

Two cameras in the same unit. It's pointed at both.

Do people who have seat belts pretensioners need them so much or they are just overreacting? If you get into an accident it's better to have them than not and it's same with a dash cam.

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.

Yes, this is really what I'm wondering.

I was wondering why there was so much video footage of people riding in their vehicles' when the meteorite smacked Russia. Everyone had dash-cams in their cars because they were afraid of falling victim to a street brawl.

It makes so much sense now!

They've shown a few of these videos on Tosh.0. Guys pulling over hopping out of their vehicles, each sizing up the others weapons, and then backing down[1]. Amusing, but frightening at the same time.

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

It's mostly for insurance fraud and accident culpability. Intentionally backing into someone's car to try to make it look like they ran into you and other hijinx aren't that uncommon in Russia. Also, accidents are more common, and the justice system isn't exactly the best, so it helps to have a record of what actually happened.

That, or protect against insurance fraud.

Hah, just go on youtube and search for "Russian driving".

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

Seems like a necessity in Russia but a useful thing to have elsewhere. I know I've been in situations in the USA where I've wished I'd had one.

Can anyone here recommend a brand/model?

Here's a (n automatically translated) review of one of the better ones (Full/True HD + GPS):

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

There are a lot of cheap ones that are designed for the purpose on ebay, just search for 'dash cam'. They take standard SD video, record to an SD card and overwrite the oldest videos as it runs out of space. They can also start up automatically when they get power/you turn on the car. And they have a monitor.

I'm thinking of buying one of those Raspberry Pi cameras when they become available and whipping up a bit of Go code to make my own dashcam for < $100. I think it would work great. You could even add a cheap USB wifi dongle and have it upload the videos when you're in your driveway.

http://januscam.com/index.php/products/dual-camera-janus-v2

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).

> I know I've been in situations in the USA where I've wished I'd had one.

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.

This guy reviews them on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan

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

A coworker uses a gopro. Seems like overkill to me, but they're small...

I've been eyeballing a GoPro for a dash cam since it also overlaps with my other hobbies (cycling and ATV riding). The big drawbacks seem to be the low-light filming and the fact that it doesn't automatically turn on or automatically rewrite when the disk gets full.

The GoPro 3 Black low light performance is quite good (much better than earlier versions).

Yeah, plus it's much more tempting to thieves or kids who want a GoPro.

Is there a good way to put one in the grille of the car (i.e. permanent), not in the passenger compartment?

On a related note, The New York Times just posted synced videos from a number of dash-cams showing the Siberian meteorite: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/15/world/europe/1...

Google should use all these dash-cam clips to train their self-driving cars how not to drive;)

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?

yeah. i totally get several uses for the cameras. but the opening argument on the article made it hard to keep reading... if someone can drag you out of the car to "smash your face" i hardly doubt the camera will help you there.

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

Dash-cams are seemingly becoming a more essential piece of equipment for cars nowdays. For anyone looking into learning more about dash cams I've found lots of great information and resources about dash cams here: http://dashcamtalk.com/

Despite seeming a bit spammy, this site is actually really useful.

The article briefly mentions a scam where a driver intentionally causes an accident to extort money. It's strangely satisfying to see this unfold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvG4KAYJfY

Do they have the video upload to an offsite server in realtime?

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

I would cut the video into small chunks and store them in a Dropbox folder over a wireless connection if I wanted to implement this myself in an area where you could get an affordable unlimited data plan (that is the case in some parts of Europe at least). If that's too much data for you for bandwidth and/or cost reasons you can instead grab individual frames out of the video scream every second or two and save them as a JPEG files to be uploaded to Dropbox.

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

Edit: phrasing.

These are $60-100 units, they are pretty basic protection.

You have a free data upload link from your car?

Using cellular broadband, but only in case of an emergency, would still be useful.

I think this might be a preview of what life will be like once google googles and other augmented reality headset cams get broadly distributed. I don't mean people will become as savage as they are on the Russian roads, just there'll be far more eyewitness videos of things and entertainment will arise via aggregation of these videos.

Yea, always-on content capture will definitely record more of these humorous moments, but wouldn't people eventually feel uncomfortable anywhere out in public if they know as soon as they leave their doors, they will be put on the spotlight and potentially have all their actions shown to everyone on the web?

Definitely an interesting future preview.

On David Brin's sci-fi novel "Earth" (1990) most tourists wear googles just like the google ones.

"I don't mean people will become as savage as they are on the Russian roads..."

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...

? You flat out missread that. The idea is while the rate of violence will not change google glass style head cams will become popular AND increase the amount captured on video. Much like cellphones increasing the number of videos where cops beat someone. People don't buy cellphone to capture vides of copes beating someone, but if you can capture a video and can see such a beating you may upload the video.

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.

I took his post to imply that the purpose of dash cams in Russia is in response to the savagery of the roads, not that cams turned people into savages. I'm not sure that anyone in their right mind would argue that in any situation.

You are correct. I never meant to imply that dashcams and savagery were correlated in any way. We have become separated from reality by the confined view into reality that mainstream media has provided. With google googles everywhere maybe we'll immerse back into reality through billions of hours of google glasses video passed through the hands of legions of expert editors.

Um... I read this exact article on Jalopnik earlier today: http://jalopnik.com/why-russians-are-obsessed-with-dash-cams...

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

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

As far as I can tell, HN considers jalopnik links spam and auto-kills those submissions.

For those of you interested in purchasing one, DealExtreme has ~500 of them here:

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.

Has the stuff you've bought off of them proven to be of good build quality?

I thought they got that meteorite footage from taxis or police cars or something. This explains everything!

I've wanted a dash cam for years but the technology just wasn't there.

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.

A better option might using a service like UStream. Download their app, set your channel to private, and when you drive places, start your broadcast. I believe they automatically archive anything you livestream, so if something happens and the phone is destroyed, there's still a record of what happened. And it wouldn't fill up local storage.

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 did use an app called iOnRoad they even sent me a free windshield mount for my phone. It doesn't record video but will take a picture when it's senses some danger such as a sudden stop i.e. trying to avoid the car in front of you stopping.

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.

Wow, sounds like a foolproof idea! Wait, maybe the bad guy who's broke my window and is repeatedly punching me in the face will just grab the dash cam.

Yeah, you're right. Because it can fail in one type of situation, it must be useless. ;)

Just make sure you upload to the cloud in real time and you'll be fine :)

Interesting timing with the release of "A Good Day to Die Hard" yesterday.

Russia will be first country where Bigfoot will be caught on dashboard camera, regularly.

Which shows how usefull is the dash-cam. I will mount one for sure.

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