Deadly Crossings

Yesterday I linked to a Moscow Times piece about a Polish man who received a pretty serious thrashing because he refused to yield to car while crossing the street in a crosswalk.  An anonymous reader emailed me the following two additions to the story – I added the link myself.

1) Let’s not forget about the little old lady who was run over and killed a couple of years ago by the son of a silovik (some minister or deputy minister of defense or something like that) while crossing at a light that was in her favor (i.e. he had a red light), and not only did the guy get off scott-free, I think they actually brought action against her estate (such as it was) for having caused the accident by having the audacity to be crossing the street while he was zipping by.

2) The last line of this article is particularly ominous. A few months back, the blog reported that the Moscow authorities wanted to install video cameras all over the city – for your protection. Well, the police spokeswoman at the end of this article explains that unfortunately, there was no video surveillance at this intersection where the Polack got beat up, so the cops aren’t really going to be able to do much to nab the assailants.

While on the topic of vehicular manslaughter – Yulia Latynina’s new column today also relates a story of a pregnant woman being struck down in the crosswalk, while the driver was lucky enough to work for the police and therefore receive no punishment.