Moscow Plane Crash Caught On Passerby's Dash Cam 253
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?"
Dash car cams (Score:5, Informative)
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
have you never seen this? (Score:5, Informative)
Russian pedestrians diving under cars to try and get compensated for an accident.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c12_1349902324
Re:Every Russian has a dash cam because.... (Score:2, Informative)
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.
That sounds pretty crazy.
Car accidents never go to court in Australia, one of the two drivers always freely admits to being at-fault and their insurance company always pays out (or else the two insurance companies will sue each other).
If both drivers claim to be innocent, then it will go to court — and the punishment for lying to a police officer about events during the crash will be so harsh, nobody within a few degrees of separation will ever dare try it again. Jail time for sure.
If possible, and if there are no injuries, we'll even try to avoid letting insurance companies or police get involved at all. Better to shake hands, give the other person enough cash to repair the car, and walk away from it. Insurance companies are slow, it takes for ever to get the repairs authorised. And the cops are likely to hand one of you a stiff penalty (and maybe even defend yourself in court to avoid loosing your license) for "failing to maintain proper control of a vehicle" or some such.
If the at-fault driver doesn't have insurance (medical insurance is mandatory but vehicle damage insurance is not), then they'll definitely want to keep it under the radar or else the other driver's insurance company will fleece them.
Re:One word: Lawsuits (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:One word: Lawsuits (Score:2, Informative)
I have one and they are teh crap.
It often freezes up, recording nothing until you notice (blinkylight is not blinking) and press the reset button. The fact that it has a reset button should have made me suspicious. Sometimes it freezes up in such a way that I need to reformat the memory card in order to get it going again.
So, you can't rely on it to have recorded anything in case you do have an accident. Not good.
Re:Exaggeration (Score:4, Informative)
If you watch it in slow motion, you see an intact jet fuselage disappear (probably into a ditch) and then see the results of it slamming into the other side with debris flying up and over. That was the real crash, not the plane 4 wheeling off-road after overrunning the runway. I assume there were some kind of arresting barriers but if those wheels were from the nose gear the barriers sure didn't do much. The moments before this video were probably boring with the plane simply continuing on past the runway. The final impact was the money shot. Another angle would have been Hollywood perfect but in real life you take what you can get.
Re:Dashcams (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Two words: Car Computer (Score:3, Informative)
"I'd hate to have someone entirely at fault for hitting me try to claim contributory negligence on my part based on my own recorded evidence".
Well I hope you drive a pre 1980's car then, because if a fatality is involved the authorities will take a dump from your car computer which will tell all.
So you really don't have a reason to be paranoid, because your car's computer is there to rat you out anyhow.