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> 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 l
by pavel_lishin 2y ago
> 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 smoke detector in your house.
- barbazoo 2y agoDriving 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.
- ceejayoz 2y agoGetting falsely accused of hitting someone, being sued, and seeing a huge insurance rate hike doesn't count as harm?
- badlibrarian 2y agoI suppose the broken metaphor would be "I don't deep fry turkeys in my living room and I have smoke detectors." But what you're saying ignores the fact that you're not the only turkey on the road.
- kurthr 2y agoThe 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.
- jandrese 2y agoAlso 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.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoHonestly, car insurance fraud is one of my favorite guilty pleasures on the short-video apps.
- beej71 2y agoBefore 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.
- hermitShell 2y agoI 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 deductible. Anyway, I should probably get a dash cam…
- Noumenon72 2y agoThis 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.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoThe 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.
- steve_adams_86 2y agoSnow storm detail indicates the road may have been slippery. They might have locked their wheels on an icy hill and skated into the other car. It happens a lot where I live.
- Tireings 2y agoI would find it weird too if someone would stall. And you always need to be able to stop your car independently of the other do. You know minimum braking distance?
- jstanley 2y agoI 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?
- 2y ago
- Noumenon72 2y agoI 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.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoThey 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.
- ok123456 2y agoYou tuck the wire along the headliner with an interior tool. It's about 10 minutes of work.
- beej71 2y agoIn some cars. You're making me think of my van where installing a radio involves unbolting and lowering the steering column. :)
- stonemetal12 2y agoCars 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?
- jandrese 2y agoI'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.
- 2y ago
- rsync 2y ago"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_to_pull_off_insurance_scam_but_thankfully/ https://www.reddit.com/r/scammers/comments/1g6xcng/attempt_t...