“Never drive in Russia” is the first takeaway from The Road Movie, an hour-long compilation of footage from Russian dash cams. As Wired wrote in 2013, “The sheer size of the country, combined with lax—and often corrupt—law enforcement, and a legal system that rarely favors first-hand accounts of traffic collisions, has made dash cams all but a requirement for motorists”—and hoo boy, is their video nuts.
Over icy roads, and usually accompanied by poorly subtitled Russian (“Fuck a duck, bitch”), there are… well, okay: jaw-dropping crashes and near-misses, with cars spinning through traffic, launching off roads, and tumbling into the air. A bear that runs, and shits, as it flees an oncoming car. (“Fucking great,” says the driver. “That’s the thing I needed.”) There’s road rage that puts Americans’ to shame, in part because sometimes it involves sledgehammers, and sometimes it involves heads smashing into windshields, and sometimes it involves a particularly well-armed gentleman with both a hatchet and a handgun. There’s a… horse crash? There are explosions. Never drive in Russia.
