With the recent Meteor strike in Russia, a certain fact has come to my attention: Russian cars are equipped with dashboard mounted cameras! Almost ALL of them. Not just Police or emergency vehicles, but the average Ivan driving down the highway has a dashboard mounted camera in his Izmash. From what I have heard this is done for insurance reasons and is probably not a bad idea.

This fact raise a few questions.

Questions about a country that at various times in its recent history has been under the thumb of Secret Police and heavily autocratic government that now willingly surrounds itself with cameras and puts the results on the internet for all to see.

Questions about the once feared phenomenon of “Big Brother” becoming an embraced social norm for the sake of convenience and entertainment. Though clearly no one is bothered by any of this. Quite the opposite, they embrace it to the point of putting themselves out to the public forum in the form of YouTube postings. Daily.

Like this compilation of Russian traffic accidents.
not for those with heart conditions

And this compilation video of the recent meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere over Russia. Much of the video is taken from dash cameras.
Plus a pretty funny movie preview!

Or this video of the San Francisco meteorite

And despite the fact that UFO reports seem to be generated on at least a weekly basis, if not daily, I can find no dash camera generated UFO videos from Russia. Oh, there have been the odd Security camera alien, or local news weather or traffic cam UFO which usually turns out to be an insect or lens flare. London’s street cameras are all pointed at the ground, but Russian vehicle dash cams are everywhere, covering tens and hundreds of miles individually every day, carpeting the country.

Now you might say that there is a stereo-type of UFOs appearing on lonely country roads at night when only some poor farmer is around, but if you do a little searching you will find maps like this from It Came Out of The Sky

And others like it that pretty clearly show that UFO reporting clusters around populated areas.

I am forced to wonder what we would know if Betty and Barney Hill, or Mac Brazel had dash cams in their vehicles?
The more we surround ourselves with cameras, the harder it is going to be for anyone to hide? or for anyone to make claims without evidence to support them. And I am willing to bet it is fairly difficult to insert a fake animation into video taken from a moving vehicle and have it look real.

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Okay, yes, I feel just a little bit silly posting this next to Scott’s report on a glowing object caught on Russian TV news feed. But what can you do.