RE: Police: Crash Gangs On The Rise

[Pigeon]

gti-ted said:

To be fair most of these scams are at roundabouts and the perps brake once over the white line giving you and i little or no chance of reacting in time.

'Course if you're driving an old Land Rover with drum brakes you might inevitably slow down gently rather than losing speed rapidly and end up shunting them into the path of an oncoming lorry.

[dilbert]

Frankly, I expect that this will turn into an assault on the precedent that if someone drives into the back of you then they are at fault. I think someone somewhere needs to be pretty careful about compromise on that one.

The rationale here is simple. If, they are going to make anything from the scam it has to be your fault. This is one of the few ways that this "scam" can work.

Myself, I say who cares why they stopped. If you drive into the back of them, you were driving beyond the capability of your vehicle. Making this rule grey and unclear, will lead to more accidents. It's that simple.

Take the right message away from this announcement, even though the police didn't bother to ake it clear. Try your best to never drive in such a way as you could crash into the back of the vehicle in front.

No doubt the popularity this practice depends somewhat on the high scrap value of old bangers. The bottom line is that people in such vehicles have very little to loose. In fact, even if the insurance does not find in their favour, there is the possibility that they will still gain.

Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 12th August 02:43

[Antj]

G0ldfysh said:

All the more reason to not sit so close to the car in front..

Then no matter how hard they brake you should have time to react

wow what a clever person.

Thats not how they do it!!!

They will usually use roundabouts when its clear to go and you assume they have gone and then just bang the breaks on. If you are amazing enough to avoid that then you should be ok. 99% of people would get caught.

[drivin_me_nuts]

gti-ted said:

silly chap said:

gti-ted said:

To be fair most of these scams are at roundabouts and the perps brake once over the white line giving you and i little or no chance of reacting in time.
I bet most of them are foreigners looking for a quick buck

i bet most of them aren`t foreigners.

Yeh right !!

Good reasoned logic there, reasoning based on nothing more than an assumption based on prejudice and belief ... Where is your evidence, proof, or in fact anything at all to support this view? After all, many peoples do assume that a certain nation, not too far from here are inbred malasjusted xenophobes with a penchant for sheep and their close relatives. Clearly wrong, but some people do have that view.

As you were.

Edited by drivin_me_nuts on Tuesday 12th August 09:13

[softtop]

Orb the Impaler said:

This has been going on in NE Manchester and Bradford for *years* now; I see it all the time.

Luckily the perps are very easy to spot, and everyone I know simply gives them a very wide berth. Doesn't stop problems at traffic lights though: car in front of you, car behind you (full of first car's mates). Car in front reverses into you and claims it was your fault. Witnesses in rearmost car. You get the picture....

Fair boils my piss.

I know someone who had this done to them in Manchester in 1997. When he got out looking rather annoyed they goaded him to hit them whilst crying phyical abuse to add to the accident. A shocking way to make money..

[pistonlager]

Surely everyone here must know that the world is choc full wucking fankers by now.

Edited by pistonlager on Tuesday 12th August 09:27

[KM2]

Just out of curiosity, how does it work with accidents in this country? Back home if there's an accident and you want to make any insurance claim, you'd call the police who come, measure it up and then decide who was at fault based on that, on evidence given by witnesses etc. I take it from your comments it does not work that way here, or at least the police are not an essential element?

As for reversing into you, is there nothing that makes it apparent on the vehicle that it was being reversed into you? If you're lucky their rear light cluster gets smashed as then it will be apparent that the reversing lights were on but if not?

[RB Will]

possibly had this before. I did the drive into back of someone at a roundabout trick. I almost managed to stop. was not sure if I hit them at first turns out I only cracked my numberplate. About 3 months later I got a letter saying they wanted to claim whiplash. I have had a preffy good rear end shunt racing karts before and that landed me ontop of a tyre wall. I only had mild whiplash from that so how a 2mph crash in a car can do it I do not know.

[Alfanatic]

Dubmaster77 said:

Mike400 said:

Orb the Impaler said:

This has been going on in NE Manchester and Bradford for *years* now; I see it all the time.

Luckily the perps are very easy to spot, and everyone I know simply gives them a very wide berth. Doesn't stop problems at traffic lights though: car in front of you, car behind you (full of first car's mates). Car in front reverses into you and claims it was your fault. Witnesses in rearmost car. You get the picture....

Fair boils my piss.

My dad has mounted a discreet camera just above his rear-view mirror, with a recorder in the boot with a loop tape (i.e. once the tape is full it starts recording over itself.

Means he usually has the last couple of hours driving on tape.

Its a bit overkill and he only installed it because he could (bit of a geek / gadget freak / tinkerer type)

But its got me thinking of doing the same....

on the Gadget show recently they had a simmilar thing, When a certain amout of G Is created Ie under heavy breaking it starts to record a set time of footage I think if the Grises above a certain level I e acctually during impact it automatically saves the footage to an internal hard drive, I do remember thinking it was somewhat floored in the acctual ammount of time it recorded. Will look it up later!

Good start but won't help if you're parked and someone reverses into you.

P.S. When you hear about a building with 50 floors, do you believe it to be especially badly built?

[silly chap]

drivin_me_nuts said:

gti-ted said:

silly chap said:

gti-ted said:

To be fair most of these scams are at roundabouts and the perps brake once over the white line giving you and i little or no chance of reacting in time.
I bet most of them are foreigners looking for a quick buck

i bet most of them aren`t foreigners.

Yeh right !!

Good reasoned logic there, reasoning based on nothing more than an assumption based on prejudice and belief ... Where is your evidence, proof, or in fact anything at all to support this view? After all, many peoples do assume that a certain nation, not too far from here are inbred malasjusted xenophobes with a penchant for sheep and their close relatives. Clearly wrong, but some people do have that view.

As you were.

Edited by drivin_me_nuts on Tuesday 12th August 09:13

absolutely, lets see the stats before we all start blaming the foreigners and patting ourselves on the back for being british.

• ***cks to that.

the world has and is moving on i suggest some of you do too.

[silly chap]

GPSS said:

gti-ted said:

To be fair most of these scams are at roundabouts and the perps brake once over the white line giving you and i little or no chance of reacting in time.
I bet most of them are foreigners looking for a quick buck

Its an african thing in east london, if you see one driving in front of you leave a big gap, because even if they arent trying to scam you, they drive badly anyway.

i bet your'e a crap driver too.

[stackmonkey]

Mike400 said:

Ahhh, whiplash, you cant prove or disprove a patient has it, easy claim and the standard is at least £2500.

Thing about whiplash is the pain or effects are not instant, so for someone to have a "sore neck" at the time of impact shows they are taking the piss imo

Part of the problem are the lawyers encouraging their clients to put a claim in even when they know rightly its bullst.

Boils my piss. A woman hit my car years ago when I was parked, I wasnt hurt, she was very nice about it and obviously sorry so I just let her sort out the damages rather than go through the insurance.

A couple of mates said I was an idiot for not claiming whiplash!!! This attitude is also part of the problem.

I can assure you from personal experience that whiplash effects can very much be instant. think in terms of pulling a muscle; sometimes you know you've done it, it hurts a little initially but you KNOW it's going to hurt a whole load more later...
When someone ran into the back of my company car at 20mph, I could feel it in my neck straight away, went to hospital to get it checked out the same evening. They said it should be OK within about 7-10 days, and it was. When the other party's insurance company rang me the following day (he had admitted fault) they asked me if I was claiming for injury. I told them what the hospital had told me and said if they hadn't from me in 3 weeks, to assume I wasn't making a claim. (I didn't make the claim)

[Alicatt1]

Had it happen at traffic lights in Sheffield at about 2am, I was first in the queue at the lights and Mondeo Man overtook me pulled right in front and slammed on the brakes. I was driving a Merc Sprinter van and had the imprint of the car on top of the bonnet of the van.
The police arrived very promptly and dealt with it. My company insurance went after the guy for atempted fraud.

[tuono]

silly chap said:

drivin_me_nuts said:

gti-ted said:

silly chap said:

gti-ted said:

To be fair most of these scams are at roundabouts and the perps brake once over the white line giving you and i little or no chance of reacting in time.
I bet most of them are foreigners looking for a quick buck

i bet most of them aren`t foreigners.

Yeh right !!

Good reasoned logic there, reasoning based on nothing more than an assumption based on prejudice and belief ... Where is your evidence, proof, or in fact anything at all to support this view? After all, many peoples do assume that a certain nation, not too far from here are inbred malasjusted xenophobes with a penchant for sheep and their close relatives. Clearly wrong, but some people do have that view.

As you were.

Edited by drivin_me_nuts on Tuesday 12th August 09:13

absolutely, lets see the stats before we all start blaming the foreigners and patting ourselves on the back for being british.

• ***cks to that.

the world has and is moving on i suggest some of you do too.

ha.ha you're all wrong. They are all brits, formerly cowboy builders who are now unemployed because of proper builders form E.Europe doing the work...lol


seriously this confirms that in London one needs to drive an old banger. Since student days I've never had anything young or looking young for a runaround car. First for financial reason, but now deliberately. People don't want to collide with you. Current 7 yrs old Picasso has dents all over the place (measuring up with garage pillars, in-laws garden gates, etc.) and we leave it dirty. People seem to give us much more room than when we're in the Porsche. When in the sportscar, we drive super carefully which we should be doing anyway.