What To Do When A Scammer Jumps In Front Of Your Car

Searching for “dashcam videos” will yield a smorgasbord of hilarious and shocking footages taken from the driver’s perspective. While you’ll often come across freaky accidents and bizarre objects in the sky, one of the most common dashcam video you’ll find is one where a person deliberately jumps in front of a moving car to fake a car accident.

Swindling people through fake accidents is nothing new. In countries like China and Russia, drivers fit their vehicles with dashcams to prevent fraudsters from victimizing them.

What To Do When A Scammer Jumps In Front Of Your Car

Although it’s not so common here in the Philippines yet, it’s only a matter of time before scheming Filipinos catch up with this crazy scheme. Before you become an unsuspecting victim, we’ll tell you what to do in case someone hurls himself on your hood.

The con

Last December 30, a Facebook user posted a video of a curious incident where a man crossed the street haphazardly and appeared to be hit by a moving vehicle. However, commenters stated that everything in the incident was fishy, starting from the person seemingly deliberately walking towards the car’s direction to the weird reaction of the person when he was blindsided.

https://www.facebook.com/ronaldallan.dizon.7/posts/10211006890588204

The biggest tell that the person was just trying to scam the driver of the car was the way he spun upon impact. Commenters thought that the person should’ve spun clockwise after that hit, but instead went the other way, which made the registered hit appear unnatural.

Whether or not the incident was planned or not is irrelevant. The fact that accidents can be contrived is the real issue here.

In another video posted last year, a person is seen trying to pull off the same stunt by approaching the vehicle as it accelerates, making it seem like the person caught in the video is sideswiped. However, the person appeared to be feigning a hit even before the car was near him and the entire incident was caught on video by the dashcam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_NRTorc3TY

Best line of defense

Based on the two incidents, it seems like the best line of defense against these scammers is having a dashcam. While these nifty devices can be useful at times, they can only do so much.

The dashcam’s perspective is very limited since it only covers the front (and back, for the units with two cameras) and it can only provide you with a footage.

If a video isn’t enough to exonerate you, then how else can you protect yourself from these scammers? According to Denmark Cristobal, marketing head of Oriental Assurance Corporation, this is one of the many instances where car insurance can come in handy.

“This is not common in the Philippines although it occurs frequently,” said Cristobal, adding that car insurance policyholders can avail of the assistance from the insurer during times like these.

(Read: What To Do If You Get In An Accident With An Emergency Vehicle)

“Having a comprehensive car insurance can greatly help people in different kinds of scams particularly this one. Claims such as these may not be covered by comprehensive car insurance, but insurance companies have the know-how, technology, experience, resources as well as access to professional investigation services of independent insurance adjusters which can provide car owners and policyholders ample protection against these fraudulent activities,” he tells eCompareMo .

And if you already have a comprehensive car insurance and some tries to scam you through jumping towards you, Cristobal said the first thing you should do is to let them know as soon as possible.

“The best way is to report the incident to their respective comprehensive insurance company and to assist and cooperate with the investigation,” he said.