Dangerous Russia: Fools and Bad Roads

Although they seem a godless lot, many Russians subscribe to an old religious fatalism. How else—in this well-educated nation—to explain the universal scorn for seatbelts, the epidemic of poisonings during every mushroom-picking season or the amazing number of winter fishermen who die each year after falling through the ice? (More than 400, some drunk, were rescued from a floating slab off Sakhalin last month; some refused to go.)

Economist, yesterday