"When I was parking out there was suddenly the other vehicle, I didn't see that before at all." Fender benders that occur in parking lots are often excused and justified this way by the person who rear-ended the car. In fact, it was stated in law that the person parking out of the car bears the burden of proof. He must prove that the accident was not his fault, which in many cases is of course difficult to do. In some cases, however, the person parking the car is actually not at fault, because there are drivers who provoke a traffic accident in this way and thus want to collect the insurance sum. This scam is not new, but in the meantime there are not only individual perpetrators, but entire gangs who want to make a living with this method.
A provoked traffic accident is insurance fraud
The alleged victims who intentionally cause a traffic accident in a parking lot, at a narrowing in the road or at other special features in the traffic routing want to collect the liability insurance of the rear-end driver. They deliberately cause collisions and it does not matter to them that not only property damage but also personal injury can occur in the process. Every deliberately caused accident is outright insurance fraud and insurance companies estimate that they incur a loss of around 1.5 billion a year as a result of this.
Dangerous interference with road traffic
From this description alone, you can already see that a provoked accident is no longer a trivial offense. From a legal point of view, deliberately caused accidents in which serious injuries are accepted constitute dangerous interference with road traffic, which can be punished with heavy fines, but also with a prison sentence of up to ten years. To do this, of course, those who caused the damage to their own vehicle must pay for it themselves, and they will be downgraded one claim class by their insurer. Points in Flensburg give it for a dangerous interference with the road traffic by the way likewise. If you are sure that you have fallen victim to a fraudster and do not want to approve of a wrong approach by your own insurance company, you can look for alternatives on the net here.
How can you tell if an accident was provoked?
Most of the time, provoked accidents are difficult to spot in practice, but there are a few small clues that can point to them:
– The vehicle of the "victim" already has previous damage
– Witnesses intervene immediately and exert pressure
– The "victim" behaves very routinely and remains completely calm
– Performed lane changes or hand signals are suddenly denied
– The "victim's" vehicle accelerated instead of braking
As soon as there is a suspicion that an accident was caused intentionally, the police should be called in to preserve evidence. In many cases it can also be checked on the spot whether the existing damage is actually due to the accident or has other causes. The officers also make sketches of the final positions of the vehicles, which can later help in reconstructing the course of the accident.