Meteors, Fights and Insane Crashes: The Crazy World of Russian Dash-Cam Videos

By now, you've probably seen the YouTube videos of the first horseman of the apocalypse spectacular meteor passing through Earth's atmosphere above the Ural Mountains, lighting up the sky, injuring hundreds of people, and making Russian people shout a lot. You're probably asking yourself a number of questions at this point: What the hell is going on? Is one of these things gonna land anywhere near me? Is it going to kill the people I care about? Is this the end of the world? Are we all fucked? And wait, why do all these Russians have cameras in their cars?

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. As a result, drivers buy dashboard cameras—or dash cams—to record their traffic accidents and altercations, providing undeniable proof for the courts or their insurance company. 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.

Either way, the prevalence of dash cams has resulted in a wealth of bizarre Russian driving videos for you to waste your life away watching. Rather than leave you to wander blindly through YouTube, we've compiled seven of the most entertaining, bizarre, and terrifying Russian dash-cam videos. Oh, and if you’re looking to meet hot, single Russian women, your targeted YouTube ads will have you covered.

If there were a question on a driving test that asked, “If you are driving on the highway, and a 23,000-pound truck is skidding towards you, what is the appropriate course of action?” I would probably cry and assume the fetal position just reading it. The fact that the two guys don't say anything, let alone don't scream like little girls, until after the out of control 18-wheeler has safely skidded past them, gives you a sense of how completely ridiculous it is to drive in Russia.

This is actually a relatively common scam in Russia: A pedestrian jumps onto the hood of a moving car, accrues a few bruises, and walks away with a lucrative personal-injury lawsuit. However, it would probably help this guy's case if he sold his performance a bit. Put in some effort, dude. Just because it’s fake doesn't mean you have to do it in slow motion. You could also at least limp away on the same fucking leg that you pretended was hit.

Why even bother having a crosswalk without any sort of traffic signal? Furthermore, why the fuck is there only half a crosswalk? Another thing we don't understand: How did the car trip her?

Here’s another testament to how ballsy Russian truck drivers are. It appears as though two drivers decided to say “fuck you” to the entire highway and turn into oncoming traffic. Miraculously, the visible of the two truck drivers survives without a scratch even though he’s thrown through a sheet of windshield glass. No seat belt, no body armor. The dude lands on his feet, dusts the glass out of his hair, turns back to the guy with the dashboard cam, and gives an unflappable look like, “Gosh, that was weird.”

Imagine if a crane and a bus had crashed and nobody filmed it. It’s one of those spectacular once-in-a-lifetime moments you'd want to share with everyone, like when your buddy caught the winning homerun ball at the World Series, or that time you saw a Sasquatch and a unicorn 69ing. Thank god for dash cams, right? I like to imagine that the crane driver berating the bus driver with well-deserved insults as he uses his crane to tow the bus to the garage. Also notice the second bus that decides not to speed into traffic. Slow and steady wins the race.

Sometimes when you're a grandma, shit gets fucking real. She didn't live through Stalin, famine, the siege of Leningrad, and the fall of the Communist party just so this guy could… erm… well, the video doesn't actually show what he did to her. But whatever he did, it was a stupid enough driving mistake to send somebody's babushka into Hulk mode. Oh, and you know who else used to gesture wildly with their fist to express their outrage? This guy:

Nikita Khrushchev, gesturing wildly.

Unfortunately the video ends before we find out whether the cows escape and start their own communist farming collective. But what this video does show is two things: First, that Russian cows are tough as nails; and second, that this moment would have been lost forever without dash cams. In conclusion, dash cams fucking rule.

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