Apparently, it’s perfectly legal to take a bear with you on a car ride in Russia. So long as that bear has its seat belt on, of course.
Russian drivers were shocked to see a brown bear stick its head out of the passenger-side window, casually cruising down the road. You don’t have to take our word for it, somebody was kind enough to take a video of the incident:
Concerned drivers reported the vehicle to police, who called the driver up for questioning. It seems, however, the police feel the driver did nothing wrong, apparently because the animal was wearing a seat belt.
Not everybody agrees with the police. Julia Filatova, a professional bear trainer and head of the famous Filatoc circus, told the Daily Mail:
“If it was more than a year old it wouldn’t have fit in such a car and certainly wouldn’t have gone inside happily,”
According to the Daily Mail, local police said there are no laws against transporting bears in this manner.
“Local police said it was not illegal to transport bears in this way – as long as they wore a seatbelt – according to the Russian road traffic laws. They did not specify whether they had spoken with the driver or how they had verified that the bear was wearing a seatbelt.”
Of course, the Daily Mail can be a somewhat nefarious news source, so take what you read from there with a grain of salt. Still, the video evidence is there. It seems this really did happen, and is yet another reason why Russia is one crazy place to live.
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