Bumper Cars
By: Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: 2004-03-19 15:29:00-05:00
Alice Ross, a 71-year-old grandmother, was driving along a quiet tree-lined street in Bayside, N.Y., when a car with young people in it seemed to take aim at her 1985 Buick Regal and deliberately ram into it—not once, but twice, police later determined.
"She tried to get away from them and lost control of her car and hit a maple tree," Michael Ross says of his mother, who died almost instantly. "I can't imagine what thoughts might have run through her head when this was happening. She must've been so frightened, scared out of her wits."
Police allege that Alice Ross was a victim of a staged collision—botched, as it turned out—engineered by a scam artist who intended to get a big settlement from Ross' insurance company by faking bodily injuries and filing bogus medical claims.
A 22-year-old Brooklyn man was arrested in connection with her death. He is awaiting trial on murder and fraud charges.
Staged automobile accidents—most of them perpetrated by organized rings—have reached epidemic proportions in Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and other states.
In Florida, staged accidents have become so widespread that state lawmakers last year established a two-year mandatory prison term for convicted offenders.
"The fraud is increasing and it's substantial," says Nina Banister with the Florida Department of Financial Services.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., recently urged the U.S. Justice Department to establish a federal-state task force to deal with the crime—which, he says, costs drivers in his state nearly $200 a year in higher premiums.
"Staged accidents are a widespread and growing crime spree," says James Quiggle of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, a nonprofit group in Washington. "They loot well over $2 billion in bogus injury claims from insurance companies a year, raise premiums for all honest drivers and can threaten the lives of innocent motorists who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Protect yourself, experts say, by never tailgating and by being alert to the driving patterns of motorists near you. A driver, for example, who cuts in front of you and jams on his brakes may be trying to get you to rear-end his car.
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