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

http://www.animalnewyork.com/2012/russian-dashcam/

by georgecmu • 13 years ago

147 117 13 years ago

jostmey• 13 years ago

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!

lutze• 13 years ago

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!

Zimahl• 13 years ago

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

sliverstorm• 13 years ago

That, or protect against insurance fraud.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

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.

LatvjuAvs• 13 years ago

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

saevarom• 13 years ago

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

todorcom• 13 years ago

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

sakopov2• 13 years ago

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.

maratd• 13 years ago

> 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.

martinced2• 13 years ago

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 ; )

huhtenberg3• 13 years ago

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

dlokshin• 13 years ago

> 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.

coldtea2• 13 years ago

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

gdy4• 13 years ago

Why on earth would anyone bribe a mailman?

revelation• 13 years ago

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

shrikant• 13 years ago

So just like India now, got it.

gdy4• 13 years ago

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.

shn2• 13 years ago

Wasn't corrupt before the collapse? :)

sakopov2• 13 years ago

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.

gcb03• 13 years ago

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.

huhtenberg3• 13 years ago

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

Surio• 13 years ago

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)

mesofile• 13 years ago

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?

Domenic_S• 13 years ago

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

freehunter2• 13 years ago

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.

mahyarm• 13 years ago

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.

smackfu5• 13 years ago

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

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

georgecmu2• 13 years ago

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...

stcredzero10• 13 years ago

> 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.

jff• 13 years ago

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.

pixl973• 13 years ago

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).

rdl• 13 years ago

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

ryusage6• 13 years ago

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?

jacquesm4• 13 years ago

A fish rots from the head.

stcredzero10• 13 years ago

Reminds me of these reddit comments about Russian girls:

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

coldtea2• 13 years ago

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

ryusage6• 13 years ago

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.

smackfu5• 13 years ago

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

at-fates-hands• 13 years ago

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.

philwelch• 13 years ago

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

xentronium2• 13 years ago

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.

ryusage6• 13 years ago

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

gdy4• 13 years ago

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

pjob• 13 years ago

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

ImprovedSilence• 13 years ago

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..

georgecmu2• 13 years ago

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

narrator2• 13 years ago

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.

martinced2• 13 years ago

"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...

Retric• 13 years ago

? 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.

freehunter2• 13 years ago

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.

yeureka• 13 years ago

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

uglytom• 13 years ago

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.

rcina• 13 years ago

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/

smackfu5• 13 years ago

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

ww520• 13 years ago

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?

justincormack• 13 years ago

You have a free data upload link from your car?

stcredzero10• 13 years ago

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

smackfu5• 13 years ago

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

networked2• 13 years ago

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.

davidradcliffe• 13 years ago

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

euroclydon• 13 years ago

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.

ChrisClark• 13 years ago

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

geoka9• 13 years ago

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

nivertech• 13 years ago

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?

gcb03• 13 years ago

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.

drewda• 13 years ago

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...

dhughes2• 13 years ago

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.

honestcoyote• 13 years ago

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.

dhughes2• 13 years ago

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.

yellowbkpk• 13 years ago

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.

sah2ed• 13 years ago

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

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

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