Does everyone in Russia have a dashcam or something? It seems like every other video I see on YouTube was recorded on one, and yet I don't know of anyone in Japan or the US with one installed (parking cams don't count). It's a great idea– I would probably get one if I still had a car, but it's amazing to me just how prevalent they seem in Russia. (Elsewhere too? I don't know. I'd love it if someone could enlighten me.)
It's a byproduct of Russians using them to combat corruption and scammers on the road. It's a fad that caught on based upon the underlying need. In the US most citizens don't have that underlying need. The cops, on the other hand, do have burden of proof and liability concerns, so police cars do have them. If the average citizen could be extorted on the highway they'd start to catch on here too :)
> If the average citizen could be extorted on the highway they'd start to catch on here too :)
Actually, after having driven tens of thousands of miles on the interstates a number of years ago I think they would be a tremendous improvement on rest stop safety at the very least. That may be better served by an omnidirectional parking cam (and it would have to be running all the time, or you would need to flip it on), but I don't think it's a bad trend. It's certainly more appropriate than asking the state to manage/install even more surveillance nodes...
Edit: by 'it' I meant recording devices in vehicles, put there by the vehicle owner.
Possibly. From a privacy pov, I suppose I'd also prefer a decentralized option like this, where everybody just gets their own small slice of all the data instead of one government collecting all of it in a centralized location. It might be slightly less efficient, but in general it's a better way of roughly getting the data just where it needs to be, as long as it needs to be.
Also note that the thing that caught on = something with a rather direct very personal advantage to the adopter, while your suggestion (that hasn't caught on) = something that personally helps against very rare events and sort of increase ambient security for everyone. Some lesson about human nature, here :)
From a privacy pov, decentralized is worse, is it not? If no one can enforce a no-recording rule, there will eventually be available video of essentially everything.
I think that's exactly the world we're heading for, and I prefer it to a world in which some entity has the power to compel the absence of recording, but Schmidt is very likely to be right: privacy is dead.
It's to capture the car to car accidents and the road rage incidents. Too many people have bought their driving licenses and drive as if they are the only people on the road. Too many of these come from the criminal background and won't shy away from expressing their dissatisfaction with your driving ethics and what not. Now there's a dashcam for that.
"Corruption is rampant in the Russian Federation, and that’s led most motorists to take matters into their own hands. It’s not uncommon for a driver to be pulled over by the notorious Russian Highway Patrol (GAI) and harassed into paying a bribe. Dash cams afford at least a little protection from baseless accusations." [1]
Police corruption, scams of all kinds including from organised crime and even pedestrians, auto-insurance extremely expensive without dash cams due to high claim history, poor road maintenance especially in winter conditions leading to higher volume of accidents, courts intolerant of any evidence other than video due to unreliability, etc.
I've heard the explanation that Russian insurance companies are much less likely to pay out if you don't have a dashcam. I'm not sure how true that is but it sounds likely to me.
