Car accidents (and unmanned vehicles). But mostly car accidents.

Everything else
1

This is so strange.

Earlier this week at dinner, my wife gets a call and it’s my teenage daughter in tears because she was in an accident in the car. She’s okay, except she’s upset. A nice lady gets on the phone and assures my wife it’s only a small dent. She’s willing to handle it off the books. Wife asks her to get an estimate.

Daughter totaled the Montero last year, so I assume she’s just an inexperienced driver. Next morning I see the damage is on the driver’s side front bumper. Headlight still works, but there is an ugly rip in the fender.

Today I go to meet with Rebecca, the nice lady who doesn’t want to see our insurance costs go through the roof. She shoves some paperwork from a local body shop into my hand and assures me it’s way too much to pay. It’s $2k. I look at the damage to her car and it’s also on the driver’s side, but on the back door and above the wheel well. Rebecca introduces me to her husband Terry, who tells me he is interested in making a deal. What will I give him for the damage? He also tells me he has cancer. And, for some reason, that he has worked at the local chain grocery store most of his life. It doesn’t really matter, but Terry doesn’t have any front teeth. Meanwhile, Rebecca keeps assuring me that my daughter is a wonderful person and that the people that run these body shops are all thieves. I’m getting a really bad feeling about all of this.

I suggest they go to Doug’s for an estimate, a body shop I’ve used that’s right around the corner. Terry tells me he will. It’s time for me to go, but Terry keeps circling back to me paying him. He suggests $700 or $800. I tell him we probably have to go through insurance.

I get out of there and go to the grocery store. Rebecca calls me and hands the phone to Terry. It hasn’t been 20 minutes. He tells me he got the estimate from Dougs and it’s $3k. Huh. Doug has never moved that fast for me. I tell Terry I’m sorry he has cancer and that we’re going to have to go through insurance and hang up. As I’m paying for my groceries 5 minutes later, Rebecca calls again. I push it to voicemail.

I go home and ask my daughter to describe the accident to me. She says she was exiting a parking lot and making a right turn. Rebecca was in the center lane entering the parking lot. Somehow the two cars collided. Some accidents you can tell by the position of the cars who is at fault, but this doesn’t sound like one of those accidents to me. I asked my daughter what happened next and she said Rebecca got out of the car, looked at the damage and said, “You’re going to have to pay for this.”

As soon as my child started to weep, Rebecca changed her tone.

Fuck! That sneaky little shit took advantage of my kid.

I think Rebecca collided with my daughter on purpose. We never exchanged insurance information. I’m not even sure if Rebecca owns the car that was damaged. She told my daughter something about it being a loaner, but I didn’t know that until just this afternoon.

Holy shit.

Am I being extorted?

Should I call the cops?

I feel weirdly relieved and also a little bit stupid. I’m also furious because the Honda has an ugly rip in it. I let my kid automatically assume she was responsible, but I didn’t even look into it. I think she’s being preyed upon. It’s just all very unsettling.

2

Jeez dude, I don’t think anyone here is going to be able to tell you whether or not you’re being played but I think you’re doing the right thing going through insurance. If it’s all innocent, well and good, maybe your premiums go up a bit. If it’s not, see where this goes. Insurance will probably send an adjuster to check out both cars, maybe they’ll figure out what happened.

3

Sounds extremely fishy. Call insurance and handle it correctly.

4

Oh, it matters.

Hell, yes, to going through proper channels!

5

I’ve actually heard of a friend running into a scam like this. So yeah, force it through official channels.

6

In my state you have to report accidents within 72 hours if someone is hurt or if it’s above 2500 to the DMV. At this point, you don’t even know if the woman has insurance right? I am not a huge fan of internet arm chair lawyers, but I am wondering if this person is actually insured. Regardless of who is at fault, if they’re not… that’s not a minor problem for them…

I’ve heard of these cash deals in the past. They’re not all scams, but this doesn’t sound like the usual approach at all.

7

I don’t have any good advice but I sure hope edf everything works out for you. It sucks that there are awful people out there that do this sort of thing.

8

Always, always, always get the police involved when there is an accident. If you are at fault, and you rates go up, that’s just the unfortunate cost of driving sometimes. But never ever let someone talk you into doing things “off the books” or with cash. They’ll rake you over the coals, it can become he said/she said and they could try to take you to small claims court. They’d probably lose, it sounds like given who they seem to be, but you’d still have to go through all that. I’d try to get the police involved if you can, even just call the sheriff and pick his brain.

9

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. I’ve dealt with a lot of hillbillies in my day and most of them aren’t full of malice - although at the same time most have no problem taking advantage of “the man” if they think they can get away with it (21st peasant cunning essentially). It may be they’re just bungling things up and the body shop might be happy to jack up rates as well if they’re thinking it’s an insurance or repair by a third party that’s guaranteed the work for whatever the cost will be. But, otoh, if they smell “free money” and your hand is out, they’ll snatch it because peasant.

So there are a few questions i’m not clear about:

  1. Did the accident happen on a parking lot or on a public street?

Because accidents on parking lots are not moving violations. Police will not issue tickets for any party. This means often insurance carriers will only agree to cover their client. I had an accident recently at a supermarket where we both backed up into each others’ blind spots (and each others’ vehicles) at the same time - and both of us agreed it was impossible to say who hit who. We were both cool about it but her father-in-law was an auto insurance broker and so wanted to wait for the police just to get a report, and walked away with both of us agreeing to pay for our own vehicles.

  1. Was your daughter clearly at fault? Did she admit fault to “Rebecca”? It seems like it’s hard for you to tell.

I can’t tell you how many stories i’ve heard and seen where, really, people aren’t necessarily full of malice but just stupidity. Bad drivers will swear on a bible they were driving perfectly normally and it was the other person at fault, even if you have video clearly showing the opposite. It might be Rebecca just assumed if she’s in an accident it’s not her fault - again, not because she’s scheming, but because she’s dumb.

  1. If you’re willing to pay how much will you be comfortable paying when you receive an estimate?

I mean, repair shops just don’t hammer things straight anymore. Any body damage usually requires the repair of the whole segment. 3k actually isn’t that much for bumper + side of wheel, tbh. If you’re not happy about that, perhaps you should coordinate the repair?

  1. If you don’t want 3k out of pocket but are still willing to fix it, i’d go through the insurance company.

Just tell Rebecca - which is completely the truth - that you were not expecting such a large bill and don’t want to spend that much out of pocket.

OTOH if you don’t think your daughter was at fault, she was on a parking lot, and/or you don’t feel like these people are being straight with you, are you willing to go the distance with this? Maybe get security footage, if possible? Or just disconnect from them (ghost them i guess is the phrase)? Do they have any recourse if you back out?

10

My 82 year old mother got side swiped on Wednesday this week , she did exactly what I told her to do in any accident.

Call the cops , call the insurance company.

The lady who hit her, asked her three times if she was sure the cops needed to get involved.

There is too much BS going on in this world with strangers trying to make a deal to keep your insurance low.

11

Yeah, call the insurance company and the them all the contact info. These people sound like straight up scam artists to me.

12

I’m not certain this is always a rule of thumb, though I would have thought so until recently. My point of reference is an accident my wife and I were involved in last year. We were parked, she was driving and was opening her driver side door to get out, and a car whizzed by and knocked its mirror against our door. She was lucky she hadn’t stuck her leg out to get out, could have been ugly. Anyway, I called 911 to alert the police and inform them of what happened. They asked if there were any injuries and I said no, and they said they would send a patrol if we requested, but it was not required if we felt we had everything under control. So I said I thought we had this, we both talked to insurance and went from there. So I don’t know if the law has changed or that’s specific to Washington state maybe.

13

I’m not so sure of all the “always call the cops” advice. I think that it depends on your jurisdiction. In Quebec, where we have no-fault insurance province-wide, everyone is taught about something called a “constat aimiable” (translates to a joint report). As long as there are no injuries, you are encouraged not to call the police and complete the report together. It even allows for disagreement between the parties.

14

Insurance protocols vary greatly by state. In Michigan, where its no fault, what you describe is a common scam. Especially if it happened in a parking lot, which is considered private property and the cops are likely to tell you to just deal with it through insurance as they have no jurisdiction there. In many cases where people try to handle it person to person, they probably do not have insurance and want neither the cops or an insurance company involved.

In your situation, I would allow the insurance company to deal with it. There are too many red flags here to do otherwise.

15

Don’t admit fault when calling insurance, either. Don’t start out with “my daughter totally hit somebody.”. Just report facts:. When, where, who.

If these people are scammers they will try and disappear and then your insurance should cover it as a no fault accident, or assume they are liable, pay for the repairs and then try and recover from the scammers.

16

Yes, you are being scammed.

Terry doesn’t have any front teeth because he smokes meth and runs scams to feed that.

The next time they call you looking to make a deal, tell them your friend Carl the state trooper said you need the VIN (vehicle identification number), license plate and proof of insurance (which is required in Washington) from the vehicle that was involved in the accident. Since their car is iffy on at least two of those items, they’ll stop and move on to other potential victims, you’ll have to make a claim on your insurance for the repair, and your daughter will hopefully learn a valuable lesson on the duplicity of shitbag people.

17

Thanks guys, yeah. I’m thinking it’s probably not something to take to the police. I’m going to have to call the insurance company and let them know what happened. I don’t even have any information from the other guys, except for their names, a phone number, and the address they put on the body shop estimate for their car. But I guess that doesn’t matter at this point. I’m just glad everyone is safe.

The further I get from my meeting today, the more sure I am that it is a scam. I’m not even sure the damage I saw was recent damage, but I wasn’t feeling suspicious enough to get down there and really give it a good look. I doubt they have insurance. Hell, for all I know, the real owners of their car might be stuffed into the trunk of the car, and these guys are just trying to get as much as they can.

I think what shakes me up most is that my daughter came away from this feeling responsible, and without doing any due diligence, I let her take responsibility for it. Five minutes with these people and it’s a whole different ball game. Teach me to let my guard down.

18

Yeah, this is smart advice. Thanks Guap!

19

I actually work for a large auto insurance company, but unfortunately I don’t work in claims, legal, fraud, or service. I do predictive analytics and other data/math, but still pick up a thing or two through osmosis. So, some thoughts in not a particular order.

  1. Auto insurance laws can vary greatly by state. Michigan has incredibly high no fault medical default limits, which is why it is the most expensive state for auto insurance in the country. Florida doesn’t require Bodily Injury at at all, and instead has a low limit of no fault personal injury protection instead. As a result, underinsured or unisured auto insurance is much more expensive in the state since so many drivers lack decent liability coverage. Anyways, point is the state the accident occurred in can have a big affect on what the liability is.

  2. NEVER SETTLE OUTSIDE OF INSURANCE. Not a lawyer or an expert, but if you attempt an off the books settlement, your insurance company can deny liability if you should turn to them later. More over, for an accident to be even surcharable in many states, it has to hit certain cost thresholds. So, if its a small amount (say $400), chances are its at or around your deductible anyways and it might not even affect your rates. If its a large amount, well, that is what you want insurance for even if rates go up.

  3. My guess would be these are not professional fraudsters because the amounts are to low. Also, terrible sales pitch. Plus, in some states if the car is wholly owned by the non-negligent party, they can just take the cash and not make the repairs anyways.

  4. The money is a bit high for a repair, but not impossibly so. My guess? Terry took it to a shop, and decided he’d rather have some amount of cash on hand than a repaired car. Which is odd because he probably could have gotten that and more by going through insurance. If this is extortion or fraud, it is severely lacking in sophistication. I struggle imagining arranging an accident multiple times in moving vehicles and not end up at fault, with a totaled car, or hurt. If medical fraud was involved, a payout of $10-$15 thousand might make it worth the risk, but they aren’t asking for that… at least not yet. Speaking of which, GO THROUGH INSURANCE.

  5. Parking lot accident insurance fraud is a thing, but usually that is somebody backing out of a parking space just as the mark’s car passes to create an accident. The way you describe the accident, it is who veered into whose lane. Which is a lot more ambiguous, but I leave that up to the professionals to figure out. It certainly isn’t a good way to stage accidents. There are two scenarios, one is your daughter is at fault and the other Rebecca is at fault. It is theoretically possible the accident happened right and the lane divide that blame can be divided up, or something like that. Anyways, I would not take ambiguity to mean your daughter is not at fault… but maybe she is not.

  6. I don’t know how old your daughter is, but being that this is the second accident she was involved in, and the first resulted in a totaled car, make sure you have a talk with her about distracted driving. If I ever have kids, they will at some point have a phone and have driving privileges, but if they ever use both at the same time I’m taking both away and they can cry about it. Really, a lot of accidents are happening because people use their phones while driving, and that includes “hands free” options on some cars.

  7. As for calling the police, definitely do so in the case of possible injury. However, the police in a lot of municipalities are overworked and may take a while to respond, or they will just tell the drivers to deal with it themselves unless certain thresholds are met. Alternatively, you can CALL YOUR INSURANCE and follow their instructions. Mostly, they will gather a lot of the same information as a police report: names, license numbers, other driver’s insurance information, etc.

20

I agree with you here, but how are you going to know? A lot of kids would rather lose driving privileges than have their phones taken away. Kids are going to be reluctant to admit they were distracted by their phones when they had an accident.

I’ve thought about this because the girlfriend’s daughter is about to get her license and this kid walks around with the phone in her hand all the time. It’s rarely never than an arm’s length away. One time her mom took it away just for a couple of hours over some kind of school issue and there was yelling, crying, and the slamming of doors.