Another day, another terrible attempt at insurance scamming.
Fascinating, innit, and hilarious, to look at the versatility of the human mind. Some of us will enter this life and go on to master air travel or sport. Others will explore space; some may revolutionise the world of quantum mechanics and critical theory.
Then we have the dreamers, usually found deep in the suburbs, who spend their days throwing themselves in front of cars in an attempt to bag some filthy lucre.
What makes it hilarious is that by all accounts it never pans out. In fact, I’d say the venn diagram of people who cannot run and people who run in front of cars is a perfect circle.
Watch as the unknown female hangs around at a crossroads for a passing car, only to run and jump on the bonnet:
Take this one for example, caught on a dashcam in the city of Buzuluk in the Orenburg Oblast region of Russia.
Said to be a ‘mother of many children’, the woman claims she wanted to commit suicide.
As you can see, the whole thing goes to pot before she even leaps knee-akimbo into the air. There is zero commitment to the alleged fraudulent cause.
New to all this? You shouldn’t be. Insurance fraud is a serious and frequent business here in the UK.
MoneySuperMarket asked all 43 territorial UK police forces how many cases of motor insurance fraud had been recorded over the past ten years, breaking down the results by the type of offence.
In total there were only 1,087 cases of motor insurance fraud reported to forces over the past decade. The Association of British Insurers, meanwhile, recorded 68,000 cases of motor insurance fraud in 2016 alone.
The police force that recorded the highest number of cases of fraud was City of London Police with 746 cases.
Kevin Pratt, consumer affairs expert at MoneySuperMarket, said:
Motor insurance fraud remains a big problem for drivers in the UK. Although we often hear from insurers about the impact that criminal activity has on car insurance prices, with £50 per policy being mentioned, these figures show that a surprisingly low amount of incidents are being reported to police forces.
This may be because, historically, so-called ‘white collar’ crime has been less of a priority for the police.
And in society in general, insurance companies are often seen as ‘fair game’, creating an impression that insurance fraud is a victimless crime. Whatever the reason, what police forces see is clearly the tip of the iceberg.
He added:
Ultimately, it’s honest motorists who foot the bill for fraudulent activity because false claims push up the price of annual premiums by around £50 per motorist.
With the average cost of a fully comprehensive policy currently sitting at £508 a year, now’s a good time to shop around and see if you could be getting a better deal.
If you haven’t switched for a while you could be in line for a substantial saving on your premium, potentially in the region of £280, so it’s worth the minor effort.
So, once again, it may be an idea to invest in a dashcam, you could turn a tidy profit with footage of would-be fraudsters failing in epic fashion going viral…
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