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

147 points by georgecmu 14y ago

jostmey 14y 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 14y 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 14y 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s0XH5YA2mo
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  That, or protect against insurance fraud.
- InclinedPlane 14y 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 14y ago
Russia will be first country where Bigfoot will be caught on dashboard camera, regularly.
saevarom 14y ago
I thought they got that meteorite footage from taxis or police cars or something. This explains everything!
todorcom 14y ago
Which shows how usefull is the dash-cam. I will mount one for sure.
sakopov 14y 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 14y 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.
  - coldarchon 14y ago
    I just love englishrussia.com - every day russia's finest ..
- martinced 14y 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 ; )
mesofile 14y 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 14y ago
  A coworker uses a gopro. Seems like overkill to me, but they're small...
  - freehunter 14y 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.
    - modoc 14y ago
      The GoPro 3 Black low light performance is quite good (much better than earlier versions).
    - smackfu 14y ago
      Yeah, plus it's much more tempting to thieves or kids who want a GoPro.
- mahyarm 14y 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.
- smackfu 14y ago
  This guy reviews them on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan http://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan I think all the brands are "random Chinese company of the week."
ryusage 14y 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?
- jacquesm 14y ago
  A fish rots from the head.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Reminds me of these reddit comments about Russian girls: http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_something_something_russian_girls/c7untbu http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_som... http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_something_something_russian_girls/c7uo8om http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_som...
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      I'm not sure how these comments have anything to do with the way Russia is being run these days.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        "How does a whole country get to be so sociopathic?"
        jacquesm 14y ago
        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.
pjob 14y 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvG4KAYJfY
ImprovedSilence 14y ago
Um... I read this exact article on Jalopnik earlier today: http://jalopnik.com/why-russians-are-obsessed-with-dash-cams-5918159 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..
- georgecmu 14y ago
  As far as I can tell, HN considers jalopnik links spam and auto-kills those submissions.
narrator 14y 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.
- martinced 14y 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 14y 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.
  - freehunter 14y 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.
    - narrator 14y ago
      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.
rcina 14y 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/ http://dashcamtalk.com/
- smackfu 14y ago
  Despite seeming a bit spammy, this site is actually really useful.
ww520 14y 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 14y ago
  You have a free data upload link from your car?
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Using cellular broadband, but only in case of an emergency, would still be useful.
- smackfu 14y ago
  These are $60-100 units, they are pretty basic protection.
- networked 14y 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 14y ago
Interesting timing with the release of "A Good Day to Die Hard" yesterday.
euroclydon 14y 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 14y ago
  Yeah, you're right. Because it can fail in one type of situation, it must be useless. ;)
- geoka9 14y ago
  Just make sure you upload to the cloud in real time and you'll be fine :)
nivertech 14y 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?
- gcb0 14y 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 14y 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/16meteorite_videogrid.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/15/world/europe/1...
dhughes 14y 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 14y 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.
  - dhughes 14y 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 14y ago
For those of you interested in purchasing one, DealExtreme has ~500 of them here: http://dx.com/c/735 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 14y ago
  Has the stuff you've bought off of them proven to be of good build quality?

147 points by georgecmu 14y 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 14y 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 14y 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s0XH5YA2mo
sliverstorm 14y ago
That, or protect against insurance fraud.
InclinedPlane 14y 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 14y ago

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

saevarom 14y ago

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

todorcom 14y ago

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

sakopov 14y 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 14y 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.
- coldarchon 14y ago
  I just love englishrussia.com - every day russia's finest ..
martinced 14y 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 ; )

mesofile 14y 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 14y ago
A coworker uses a gopro. Seems like overkill to me, but they're small...
- freehunter 14y 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.
  - modoc 14y ago
    The GoPro 3 Black low light performance is quite good (much better than earlier versions).
  - smackfu 14y ago
    Yeah, plus it's much more tempting to thieves or kids who want a GoPro.
mahyarm 14y 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.
smackfu 14y ago
This guy reviews them on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan http://www.youtube.com/user/Techmoan I think all the brands are "random Chinese company of the week."

ryusage 14y 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?

jacquesm 14y ago
A fish rots from the head.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Reminds me of these reddit comments about Russian girls: http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_something_something_russian_girls/c7untbu http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_som... http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_something_something_russian_girls/c7uo8om http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/16bl5l/something_som...
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    I'm not sure how these comments have anything to do with the way Russia is being run these days.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      "How does a whole country get to be so sociopathic?"
      - jacquesm 14y ago
        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.

pjob 14y 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvG4KAYJfY

ImprovedSilence 14y ago

Um... I read this exact article on Jalopnik earlier today: http://jalopnik.com/why-russians-are-obsessed-with-dash-cams-5918159 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..

georgecmu 14y ago
As far as I can tell, HN considers jalopnik links spam and auto-kills those submissions.

narrator 14y 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.

martinced 14y 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 14y 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.
- freehunter 14y 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.
  - narrator 14y ago
    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.

rcina 14y 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/ http://dashcamtalk.com/

smackfu 14y ago
Despite seeming a bit spammy, this site is actually really useful.

ww520 14y 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 14y ago
You have a free data upload link from your car?
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Using cellular broadband, but only in case of an emergency, would still be useful.
smackfu 14y ago
These are $60-100 units, they are pretty basic protection.
networked 14y 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 14y ago

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

euroclydon 14y 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 14y ago
Yeah, you're right. Because it can fail in one type of situation, it must be useless. ;)
geoka9 14y ago
Just make sure you upload to the cloud in real time and you'll be fine :)

nivertech 14y 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?

gcb0 14y 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 14y 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/16meteorite_videogrid.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/15/world/europe/1...

dhughes 14y 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 14y 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.
- dhughes 14y 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 14y ago

For those of you interested in purchasing one, DealExtreme has ~500 of them here: http://dx.com/c/735 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 14y ago
Has the stuff you've bought off of them proven to be of good build quality?