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Skate boarding with a car!
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I hope everyone he'd overtaken took their duty of laughing and pointing as they went past seriously.
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Look on YouTube for ' car crashes in Russia '
You wouldn't want to be out in anything smaller than a Sherman !
Ted
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>> Look on YouTube for ' car crashes in Russia '
>>
>> You wouldn't want to be out in anything smaller than a Sherman !
>>
>> Ted
>>
I was in St Petersburg recently, seriously scary drivers. Do not expect them to stop for a traffic light controlled pedestrian crossing. I was stood on the pavement on the Nevski Prospect, (main shopping street) waiting for Mrs ON when a car went from lane three to the bus lane to avoid stopped traffic, went through a red light at a crossing at about 50 mph and then swerved back into lane three. One example of a lot of creative driving I saw.
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This is the crossing involved, Mrs ON was in the shop with the green roof facing this view, I was on the opposite side of the road outside the shop.
goo.gl/maps/o45MX
Last edited by: Old Navy on Fri 7 Sep 12 at 16:11
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Crikey. It hasn't changed that much in 20 years. I once hailed a cab (proper old style Volga jobbie) near that exact spot and asked him to take us to Tallinn in Estonia.
30 US dollars he charged us, but we got two punctures en route. The first was dealt with with easily as he surprisingly had a spare. The second happened in the middle of a forest. It was February, 2 in the morning, and about minus 20 outside.
Being an ever resourceful Soviet, the driver flagged down a passing truck who took him to the nearest town with the punctured tyre and wheel, leaving his 4 passengers to look after the cab whilst he was away. It was a darned good job there was plenty of petrol in the car to keep the engine running to keep us warm. He got back to us with the new tyre using another hitched lift at about 10 the next morning. Not the most comfortable night I've ever spent, the howling of the local wolves being a particular highlight.
We got a train back to Leningrad the next evening.............
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>> Crikey. It hasn't changed that much in 20 years. I once hailed a cab (proper
>> old style Volga jobbie) near that exact spot and asked him to take us to
>> Tallinn in Estonia.
>>
Coincidence? I had just come from Tallin.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 10 Sep 12 at 16:23
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Those videos of Russian car accidents are almost unbelievable. The car bodyshop trade in Russia must be one of the few growth industries at the moment.
There's one involving a chap overtaking a car and a coach. His manoeuvre is perfectly safe - nice straight road, no oncoming traffic, good visibility. When he is level with the car, it pulls out to overtake the coach. The overtaking car is sideswiped at the rear, sending the nose towards the coach. It clouts the coach, sending that bouncing off the road into the bushes, and ricocheting the car back across the road into the undergrowth on the other side.
Russian roads look like something off a videogame. Incredible.
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>> There's one involving a chap overtaking a car and a coach.
Curiosity got the better of me: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ndYLFXBAe4
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Seems only a few things have changes since my time living in the Soviet Union, i.e. the number of cars on the road and the percentage of foreign cars. Both being dramatically higher. In the case of the latter, I recall only once seeing a Western manufactured car, a dilapidated white MK1 Ford Escort with Soviet plates. A mystery how it got there.
In my days there, when spare parts were hard to come by, red traffic signals were routinely ignored by those with little in the way of brakes, these drivers using the horn as a substitute for brakes as they flew through junctions. We got quite used to taxi drivers and private motorists (who could be flagged and hailed often more easily than a taxi and were often more willing to go out of their way for a few roubles than official state taxis) behaving thus. A keen eye always had to be kept at night for those driving without lights, in order to save the wear and tear (work that one out). Significant delays were always caused by rain, due to the fact that every car had to stop, its driver needing to obtain the wiper blades from within the car, and affix them to the exterior. They were always stored internally for fear of theft, spares parts being what they were then. It seems that, despite my assumption that spares are no longer such a problem, little has changed in terms of driving style.
Strangely, I saw very few accidents/aftermaths, save for one human corpse being driven around by unflinching, speeding traffic on an unlit single carriageway trunk road, a solitary traffic policeman waving a feeble luminous baton from the side of the road whilst awaiting recovery of the deceased.
The worst I witnessed was one unfortunate chap who had stumbled under a tram in central Moscow, sliced clean in two by its wheels.
Sadly, I suspect that much of the horrendous driving displayed on internet video these days (and of course since time immemorial in Russia) is mostly down to the 24 hour consumption of the national beverage common amongst large numbers of the populace. Combined with a large degree of devil-may-care in the Russian approach to life, the results on the roads are predictably gruesome.
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That'll teach him to queue jump - L'escargot
