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We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

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Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#11

Post by Noumenon72 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

> Some years ago, a police officer casually told me, “You should get a dashcam, insurance fraud is common around here.” His offhand comment stuck with me, but life moved on. This is very, very good advice. Dashcams are cheap, and easy to install. Treat yourself - spending $80 on a camera could save you thousands in lawsuits, insurance hikes, costs of a new car, etc. To me it seems nearly as important as having a smok…

I don't remember them being easy to install; you need mounts and in the case of a rear dashcam, someone to wire them into your rear seat. Car dealerships should advertise adding webcams while you're in there -- that would really make it easy.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#12

Post by kurthr »

barbazoo wrote: post #3
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

> Some years ago, a police officer casually told me, “You should get a dashcam, insurance fraud is common around here.” His offhand comment stuck with me, but life moved on. This is very, very good advice. Dashcams are cheap, and easy to install. Treat yourself - spending $80 on a camera could save you thousands in lawsuits, insurance hikes, costs of a new car, etc. To me it seems nearly as important as having a smok…

Driving defensively and slowly is much more skin to having a smoke detector as it actually aims at preventing harm rather than just figuring out who’s at fault.

The typical fraud "accident" is a vehicle with 4-5 people (including a child) who slam on their brakes in heavy traffic on the freeway. If that doesn't work, they reverse into you, and then claim whiplash for all the people in the car with a doctor who has everything to gain. It's $50k minimum.

If someone backs into you, or slams on their breaks on the freeway without reason you can drive as defensively as you want and still get unlucky. People can cause "accidents" much more effectively than you can avoid one. Careful motorcyclists know that watching the behavior of all the people around them is critical to survival, but they still get into collisions.

If you do try to drive so "defensively" that you can never get into an accident another person tries to cause, then you end up with 7-10 car lengths of separation, and people will regularly cut you off increasing risks. Please don't be that guy stopped 70ft back from the traffic light and stopping on on-ramps.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#13

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #11
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

> Some years ago, a police officer casually told me, “You should get a dashcam, insurance fraud is common around here.” His offhand comment stuck with me, but life moved on. This is very, very good advice. Dashcams are cheap, and easy to install. Treat yourself - spending $80 on a camera could save you thousands in lawsuits, insurance hikes, costs of a new car, etc. To me it seems nearly as important as having a smok…

I don't remember them being easy to install; you need mounts and in the case of a rear dashcam, someone to wire them into your rear seat. Car dealerships should advertise adding webcams while you're in there -- that would really make it easy.

They are a big fat pain. I just added a front-facing one, done the right way (into the fusebox).

Didn't bother with the rear-facing one.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#15

Post by gsibble »

monkeyelite wrote: post #10

It’s very unfortunate that the worst people in society ruin insurance for everyone else - so that when you need to use it you are investigated as a criminal. Too many systems are being broken by a tiny minority of people with no skin in the game and no social consciousness.

Almost everything wrong in society can be traced back to some small percentage of people ruining it for everyone else.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#16

Post by jstanley »

hermitShell wrote: post #5
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

> Some years ago, a police officer casually told me, “You should get a dashcam, insurance fraud is common around here.” His offhand comment stuck with me, but life moved on. This is very, very good advice. Dashcams are cheap, and easy to install. Treat yourself - spending $80 on a camera could save you thousands in lawsuits, insurance hikes, costs of a new car, etc. To me it seems nearly as important as having a smok…

I had an incident where an older couple were stopped at a green light, angled down hill, in a snowstorm, with parking brake instead of foot pedal, in a borrowed vehicle. When they asked me for insurance I just dragged it out and made friendly conversation(eventually giving the insurance slip). They got increasingly irate and panicked. Maybe because it was only a glancing blow and wouldn’t exceed even a slim deductibl…

I don't really understand what you're trying to say here.

Did you try to avoid giving them your insurance details? Why?

What would the dash cam have shown?

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#17

Post by camtarn »

It's an interesting article, but the title ('we found fraud!') doesn't quite match the article, which continually points out that there are suspicious patterns in the data but that they aren't ironclad evidence of fraud.

That said ... yeah those particular VINs do look seriously dodgy to me! If nothing else, then the drivers reporting 5 crashes in a 12 month window probably shouldn't be driving.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#18

Post by ok123456 »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #11
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

> Some years ago, a police officer casually told me, “You should get a dashcam, insurance fraud is common around here.” His offhand comment stuck with me, but life moved on. This is very, very good advice. Dashcams are cheap, and easy to install. Treat yourself - spending $80 on a camera could save you thousands in lawsuits, insurance hikes, costs of a new car, etc. To me it seems nearly as important as having a smok…

I don't remember them being easy to install; you need mounts and in the case of a rear dashcam, someone to wire them into your rear seat. Car dealerships should advertise adding webcams while you're in there -- that would really make it easy.

You tuck the wire along the headliner with an interior tool. It's about 10 minutes of work.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#19

Post by uniqueuid »

I'm kind of irritated that the article doesn't say anything about probabilities.

Given they have enough data, at some point it's perfectly reasonable to have cars with 5+ crashes per 12 months - just because of chance.

This is exactly why statistics was invented, damnit!

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#20

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #8
hermitShell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an incident where an older couple were stopped at a green light, angled down hill, in a snowstorm, with parking brake instead of foot pedal, in a borrowed vehicle. When they asked me for insurance I just dragged it out and made friendly conversation(eventually giving the insurance slip). They got increasingly irate and panicked. Maybe because it was only a glancing blow and wouldn’t exceed even a slim deductibl…

This story doesn't make sense: it's not clear who hit who, whether you were scamming them by not giving insurance, or how a dash cam would help when no real damage was done.

The older couple hit him, with their motionless, parking-braked vehicle. Possibly by using dark matter/energy to cause space-time expansion that pushed his car into theirs.
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