Getting into an accident is a scary thought. But what’s even scarier? Someone getting into an accident with you on purpose. That was the experience of one woman driving down the Bell Parkway in New York City, and the footage is going viral on TikTok.
A woman was driving down the road talking on the phone — hands-free, we assume — with her partner, when a silver car dashed into the small space between her and the car in front of her. If that wasn’t scary enough, the cars in her lane went into a stop immediately after.
So she had to slow down pretty quickly with limited space between her and the car in front of her.
The silver car stopped with traffic, but then backed up at full force into the woman’s car. The driver and passengers immediately piled out of the silver car to take pictures of the TikToker’s license plate, prepped and ready to frame her for rear-ending them, even though they were the ones who stopped short and then caused the accident.
You can hear the woman’s panicked voice in the dashcam footage as she shifts from confusion to pure terror when she realizes what has happened.
Viewers were quick to catch on to the fact that this move appeared to be an attempt at an insurance scam. The group that piled out of the silver care were potentially trying to get a payout from the insurance company by claiming the woman had run into them.
All of that backfired when they got out of the car and saw the dash cam.
When the driver of the silver car noticed the camera, his face had “abort mission” written all over it.
One commenter said that she worked in auto claims for almost 10 years, and she saw things like this all of the time. She said that it was a good thing there was a dashcam, because otherwise all of the people in the silver car would’ve claimed injury and attempted to earn a handsome payout.
The victim’s video has inspired many drivers in the comment section to get dash cameras of their own, in hopes of avoiding he-said she-said arguments with insurance companies.
Commenters noticed that when the family stepped out of the silver car, they held their heads as though they were injured, but dropped the act the moment they laid eyes on the camera. People commented about how shady the situation was overall, already scheming on how to avoid a similar situation of their own.
According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, there are several iterations of staged auto accident fraud. These incidents can happen when you’re trying to turn, or a car can crash into you while you’re trying to pull away from a curb and merge into traffic, or they can back into other cars, like in this video.
Many of these scams involve multiple cars colluding to attempt to create an accident, allowing all of the drivers to benefit from the payout.
If you get in an auto accident and suspect fraud, you should contact the NICB, or submit a form online. It definitely helps in these instances if you have dashcam footage like this woman did, proving undeniably that something sketchy was going on.
Published: Oct 21, 2024 05:54 pm