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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

#21

Post by stonemetal12 »

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.

Cars should just give you access to the cameras that are already there. Why get a rear facing camera when your car is already legally required to have one?

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#22

Post by transcriptase »

uniqueuid wrote: post #19

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!

I think “in the exact same way with all the known indicators of insurance fraud” adds a couple orders of magnitude to the expected by-chance odds.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#23

Post by jandrese »

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.

In my car taking the headliner off involves removing 6 bolts (one in each pillar) and then popping out some retaining clips. I was surprised at how easy it was when I ran the wire to the rear camera. Headliners were notoriously difficult to deal with in the old days. There was even space to tuck the excess wire away to keep it neat and tidy looking. My camera just sticks to the glass using a sticker so attaching it was no problem either.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#25

Post by gnfargbl »

I don't see nearly enough complexity in this analysis to justify the claim of having found any insurance fraud.

Firstly, there's no account for correlation between the features identified. The article mentions VINs which have several single-vehicle accidents, for example, but someone who has one single-vehicle accident is probably more likely to have another. Switching coverage is another of those potentially-correlated features; if you claim and it bumps your premium, aren't you likely to shop around as a result?

Secondly, there's no attempt to account for the law of large numbers. It's incredibly unlikely that someone has three single vehicle accidents in a year, but because the probability of that is nonzero, we know that with enough vehicles on the road then someone is going to do it.

The article covers itself by acknowledging this, of course, but if you title your blog post "We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data" then you should actually do that.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#26

Post by jandrese »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #21
Noumenon72 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cars should just give you access to the cameras that are already there. Why get a rear facing camera when your car is already legally required to have one?

I've wondered this too. Even if it's only the rear camera all cars should have a few seconds of rolling buffer that they save whenever an accident is detected. At the very least if the airbags blow it should trigger the save. You only need enough storage for maybe 10-15 seconds of footage.

I would also like the ability to turn on the rear camera when moving forward, for those times when the rear view mirror is blocked, especially on vehicles where the backup camera is integrated into the rear view mirror.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#27

Post by mattkrause »

The conclusion is a little too strong for my tastes. Changing coverage looks sketchy, but I’d bet people shop around after a crash and the ensuing rate hike.

Being involved in multiple accidents could suggest fraud but it could also just be bad driving, maybe someone very young or old.

It’d really help to know the base rates for many of these things: how often do people switch insurance, for example?

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#28

Post by jandrese »

kurthr wrote: post #12
barbazoo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Also fun to see dashcam video where someone jumps out in front of the car for the insurance claim, but the driver is too alert and stops before hitting them, only for the person to then throw themselves on the hood of the car while their friend pretends to freak out on the sidewalk and call the cops.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#29

Post by uniqueuid »

transcriptase wrote: post #22
uniqueuid wrote: post #19

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!

I think “in the exact same way with all the known indicators of insurance fraud” adds a couple orders of magnitude to the expected by-chance odds.

Well they do say they calculate propensity scores, but the whole language of the blog post is very hand-wavy. Warning over and over again that something is not causal proof, and then dramaticizing it as if it were proof is just unprofessional.

If you have a fraud model, just show the model and the data and the validation - everything else is marketing fluff.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#30

Post by cratermoon »

terrib1e wrote: post #14

Why would it be unlikely that the person committing fraud is under the influence? There's no reason to assume that.

I read that as assuming the fraudsters were professionals in a sense, i.e. doing it in an organized way. Wouldn't those kinds of criminals try to keep it looking clean?
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