Right hand drive taxis in Russian Fed.

I posted messages here in June or July re Naadym in Tuva. I took a share taxi from Abadan to Kyzyl on 11 August and reached Kyzyl in an ambulance. The driver overtook a slow vehicle and crashed head on into an oncoming truck. I was in the front seat. Luckily wearing my seat belt.The driver was unhurt Three adults and a baby in the back seat were without seat belts but only the mother of baby hurt. I never found out for sure how badly.
I spent 3 weeks in Russian Federation hospitals, 13 days in Kyzyl, one in Krasnoyarsk and a week in a medical centre in Moscow and saw NOTHING else. Insurance company contacted with difficulty and much help from good people. The Co. took me by helicopter one jump to Krasnoyark, then business class flight to Moscow and from Moscow via Dubai to Sydney.
BEWARE of those right hand drive taxis. We passed two other crashes on that road before we had our own.

Lenore

I am so sorry to hear of your problems.

Thanks for sharing the warning.

Ruth

Right hand drive cars are stolen vehicles that are shipped to Russia. I'm not sure that being a right hand drive car was responsible for your accident. Russia has a rather high number of highway accidents and fatalities for a variety of reasons. Poor roads and poor driving skills mostly. I don't have a link but there's a somewhat famous video on You Tube of an intersection in Saint Petersburg where there are NO LIGHTS of any kind and no stop signs. Basically it's a gigantic four way free for all and there are spectacular wrecks there all the time because nobody knows who really has the right of way. I have no idea if the Russians have ever bothered to fix it, but I wouldn't bet on it. The wrecks probably provide entertainment for bored city workers. I'm not kidding. Sorry about your problems, but you were very wise to wear a seat belt. I always wear mine because you never know when a wreck might happen.

jman - actually I believe that most right hand vehicles are not stolen. They are sold cheaply in Japan because of various laws there about used cars there and then shipped west from Vladivostok.

Ruth

The many right hand drive cars you see in Siberia are almost certainly not stolen, given the low levels of crime in Japan - far more likely to be stolen are old left hand drive Mercedes etc. You also see the odd right hand drive Lada in Western Russia - a lot were reimported from the UK, and some of those perhaps were stolen.

#2 "you were very wise to wear a seat belt"

A taxi driver last year in Georgia was absolutely determined not to let me wear a seat belt. I gave up in the end.
The guy drove like the clappers of course.

Until this post I thought Georgians or Armenians were the craziest drivers i've ever come accross.

#2's post is wrong on several counts. Virtually all the right-hand drive cars you find in Russia--particularly in the Russian Far East (RFE) and in Siberia--were imported legally from Japan. (For those in the know, the fact that almost all these vehicles are white is a dead give away.) Japan has a weak used-car market, so for many years the situation was mutually beneficial: in the 90's, in particular, with the virtual collapse of Russia's domestic car industry, the only decent vehicles available for sale in Vladivostok and other cities of the RFE were used Japanese imports...far more safe and reliable than brand-new Ladas or Nevas being produced at the time).

And whether or not the RHD car was "responsible" for this particular horror story, common sense suggests that it IS far more dangerous to overtake with RHD car while driving on the right. With a LHD car the driver can edge into the wrong lane and correct instantaneously if he sees oncoming traffic; with RHD car in a driving-on-the-right country, it's a blind leap. A good driver, however, would never take the risk unless he was quite certain the way was clear, so it's certainly not just about the car.

Thanks for the info' zashibis.
The wording of my posting bad. I realize RHD not the only reason for the crash, a good careful driver would not have had the accident. But add a RHD to a reckless driver and you have trouble. Tryingagain2