Russian Meteor Kicks Up Cloud of Mistrust

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- If I had to choose a single word todescribe the dominant attitude in Russian society, it would be“mistrust.” The meteor, or possibly small asteroid, thatexploded over the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15illustrated this as few other events could.

The world saw the meteor thanks to the dashboard camerasthat are so common in Russian cars. U.S. publications from theNew Yorker to Wired delighted in writing about the dash camphenomenon, unheard of in the U.S. or Europe. Russians use thedevices because they cannot trust police, judges, insurancecompanies or witnesses in case of a fender bender. A cameraproviding incontrovertible evidence pays for itself even if theaccident is relatively minor. According to the government-ownednewspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, in 2011 Russians bought 300,000dash cams, and in 2012 the market probably more than doubled.