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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

#61

Post by datax2 »

As others have pointed out VIN as your primary level of detail is fairly flawed. You should also be filtering on vehicle registrations. A possible scenario here is someone owns their car, gets into an accident, repairs it or sells it off (insurance sell off). Someone else buys it gets difference insurance, and has an accident because its a new car to them. You would never know this vehicle story without integrating the registration history or at least buy and sell dates to know it has exchanged hands.

Yes Fraud is tricky, but a VIN does not equal a person (PII) committing the behavior, and these poor association attempts leave innocent people screwed by insurance companies. What makes this bad analysis annoying, is the constant caveats, if you know VIN associations don't prove fraud then maybe don't build some sort of risk scoring on it, and then try an sell it.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#62

Post by bryanlarsen »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #52
gnfargbl wrote: post #25

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-correla…

Also, anyone who lives in an area where there are deer (or, kangaroos in australia) will tell you - strange sounding single car crashes late at night or early in the morning.. aren't that strange, that's when the deer (or kangaroos) are out and about. Where I grew up if someone had hit a kangaroo 3 times in a year it would be strange sounding for sure, but not that strange.

My Mother got a letter saying "if you hit another deer we will cancel your insurance", because she hit 3 deer in one year. Those 3 are the only deer she has hit in > 60 years of driving. Random events cluster.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#63

Post by rsync »

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…

"This is very, very good advice. Dashcams are cheap, and easy to install."

An excellent example of the absolutely awful behavior that can be encountered on the road:

https://www.reddit.com/r/scammers/comments/1g6xcng/attempt_t...

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#64

Post by Ostatnigrosh »

After reading the comments, I’d like to clarify a few things. This article isn’t meant to pitch a fraud scoring product. I recently discovered that several states publish VIN level data and, as a weekend project, decided to dig a bit deeper to see what I could learn. Given more time, I’d refine the analysis by normalizing against registration volumes, flagging outliers, and so on but for now I simply want to share an interesting glimpse at what ive found.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#65

Post by beej71 »

ok123456 wrote: post #18
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.

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

In some cars. You're making me think of my van where installing a radio involves unbolting and lowering the steering column. :)

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#66

Post by beej71 »

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.

Before I had a dash cam, I had somebody at a stop sign just throw it in reverse and back right into me. I thought I was completely fucked, that they were going to say that I rear-ended them and I would have no recourse.

Luckily for me, they just gassed it and took off. They lost me at a roundabout when I had to wait for a box truck to go by in the night.

I now have a dash cam. No amount of defensive driving would have saved me if they were fraudsters.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#67

Post by InitialLastName »

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…

If you rear-end someone, it's pretty much always your fault. People are allowed to be stopped in the road for any number of reasons, and it's your responsibility as a car operator to be aware of your surroundings and able to stop your own car without hitting anything.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#68

Post by m463 »

gnfargbl wrote: post #25

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-correla…

I remember when some game developers started restricting installations of their game. There was an outcry, but then they said it was something like 100 installs in a certain period. It became clear their outliers were probably reasonable to restrict.

Maybe just investigating the outliers of the crashes could legitimately put them onto something.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#69

Post by potato3732842 »

kstrauser wrote: post #48
camtarn wrote: post #17

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.

I got into 2 crashes in a couple of weeks once: I was in the left lane, stopped, signaling to make a left turn, when someone rear ended me because they didn't notice me. I was stopped at a red light. The octogenarian behind me revved his engine, dropped into drive, and peeled out to rear end me a second time, because he “had places to be”. When I asked for his insurance, he drove off and I had to file a hit-and-run r…

Two in a short period of time is pretty sus though. You can be "minding your own business" and oblivious to the degree to which other traffic is having to actively avoid you. My elderly mother fits into this category.

Re: We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data

#70

Post by potato3732842 »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #52
gnfargbl wrote: post #25

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-correla…

Also, anyone who lives in an area where there are deer (or, kangaroos in australia) will tell you - strange sounding single car crashes late at night or early in the morning.. aren't that strange, that's when the deer (or kangaroos) are out and about. Where I grew up if someone had hit a kangaroo 3 times in a year it would be strange sounding for sure, but not that strange.

Or just snow. I'm pretty sure every doordash driver hits a dozen things sliding down hills in the winter around here. If you get lucky it doesn't really matter because the tree or rock isn't gonna care and the damage is cosmetic. If you aren't lucky whoever's mailbox or fence you hit files a claim.
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