Everyone has their own secret YouTube shame. My aunt is obsessed with videos of blackhead being squeezed by doctors. My cousin watches hour upon hour of soap opera bloopers. Personally, I can not get enough of dash cam insurance scam videos. Ranging the comical to the deeply disturbing, all of this clips have the same thing in common: a con artist throwing themselves in front of a moving car in the hope of suing the driving but not realising that driver has a dash cam filming the action.
Here’s compilation from Russia…
And another from China…
According to one source 1 in 3 insurance claims in New York involves some kind of fraud. And since all the scammer needs is balls of steel and half decent timing, it is no wonder that diving in front of moving vehicles for cash is a growth industry. As one anonymous lawyer said:
“Insurance companies are pure evil as far as I’m concerned, but the [1 in 3] statistic above is no bullshit. As per my vast store of anecdata, almost every plaintiff I encounter is lying about something.”
He continued:
“The worst part, though, are the doctors. We could be dealing with a rear end hit case in stop and go traffic with impact at a speed on 5mph or less, and doctors will send that person for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of treatment, with injections and surgery recommendations and weeks of physical therapy. Every ache or pain the plaintiff ever had is now related to the accident. These people end up getting complicated surgeries that aren’t really needed and don’t actually help, because the doctors get to bill for them. It’s sick.”
As Marge Simpson wisely put it: “You know, the courts might not work any more, but as long as everybody is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.”
Nicholas J. Johnson is a Melbourne Magician, author, comedian and collector of scams