There are no innocent bystanders in Russia.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming the victim. It’s just that I’m having trouble finding the victims. In Russia, everyone seems to be doing everything to everyone else, all the time. There’s no pecking order I can discern. When the Soviet Union was still going strong, the totalitarian government enforced a very rigid caste system. Leonid Brezhnev cruised around in a Zil and everyone else got the hell out of the way. It’s much more egalitarian now.

Pedestrians think they’re on par with minivans. Econoboxes go toe to toe with semis. Even inanimate objects like guardrails and poles seem to come alive and get into the fray. It’s all one, big, glorious borg of action and reaction. It’s great that all Russian cars have dash cameras. Otherwise, in 100 years, when the entire country was depopulated, and no structure over 6 inches tall was left standing, we’d have to guess what wiped them all out. Nuclear weapons? Alien invasion? Nope. No turn signals, and a complete lack of fear, is all it takes.