Watch why Russians put dashboard cameras in their cars

There are some great benefits to society from the apparently ubiquitous dashboard-mounted video cameras Russian motorists install in their cars. The dash-cams captured beautiful footage of the giant meteor that struck Russia's Chelyabinsk region in February, for example. But Russians don't record their driving for our pleasure.

"In Russia, the highways are icy, the drivers are drunk, the police like to extort motorists at random, insurance companies will cheat you whenever possible (sound familiar?), and road rage is, well, all the rage," explains Noah Tavlin at Vice. "At the very least, having a dash cam lowers your insurance rates. At the very most, it can save you a lot of money in an accident or a lawsuit."

That at least party explains the video above. Russian drivers are generally liable for injuries to pedestrians they hit.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Most of these fools are obviously scam artists. Some of the fraudsters aren't even trying (watch the guy at the 0:37 mark), while others horribly miscalculate their scam (I'm thinking of the unfortunate 1:28 pedestrian). Others (1:02 mark) are probably just drunk.

I don't speak Russian, so I don't get the joke at the end of the video, but I imagine it goes something like this: Look at that pigeon, trying to fleece us out of insurance money!

The music is bad, but the images of people throwing themselves into oncoming traffic are pretty mesmerizing. You need a license to drive, says Jalopnik's Patrick George, but this "three-minute supercut of some of the dumbest pedestrians in all of Russia" suggests some should need a permit for crossing the road, too.