I think I witnessed a scam

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was driving home from work tonight. Normally I take the train, but my wife was finishing up about the same time, and it’s cold, so I decided to give her a ride back.

The roads were jammed today. I had taken a taxi earlier and it took forever to get accross town.

Anyway, it normally takes about 20 minutes from my office to my wife’s research lab, but today was more than 35. One particular streach through Roppongi took all the extra time. I was just about to my turn where I could get off Roppongi-dori (road) and was waiting in the stopped left lane. The center lane was a parking lot and the right lane was moving slowly.

Suddenly the taxi to my right attempted to jump from the stuck center lane to the moving right lane. I thought it looked dangerous and then heard the thump as the taxi smacks the back bumper of the car in front of it, which was also a taxi.

Now the potential scam. The driver of the front taxi was acting like she had been run over herself. I pulled over and got out. The rear driver got out and looked but the front driver never left her seat. She said that she felt sick and requested an ambulance. She alternated between seeming like she was going to pass out and that she had whiplash.

There is minimal damage to both cars. The back bumper is scrapped and the left front fender is pushed back, but it impact had to have been at less than 20 mph.

Japanese don’t normally get involved, but I thought I should stick around and talk to the police. I had my wife wait for another 20 minutes until the police showed up.

The officer had gotten there before the ambulance took the lady away and saw how she was. I told him I couldn’t see how the light impact could have caused what she was claiming and gave him my cell number if they want to contact me to follow up.

They moved the cars out of the center of the road before the cop came, but I took some pics of the positions of the cars. The back driver had come to a stop about 6 inches after impact, so you can tell there wasn’t much speed there.

I’ll see if they contact me.

2

Why does this indicate a scam? She may not have been badly injured, but very upset.

3

I’ve seen upset people, but this looks like a fake injury.

4

That’s actually a very common scam in Seoul - people manipulating accidents and pretending to be more injured than they are. It’s a rather risky scam but most people are willing to pay them to keep their mouths shut rather than take the thing to court.

5

I’ve seen stuff like that happen. Very light fender bender, and whiplash ensues.

6

I bumped my head once after tripping. I laughed it off not thinking it was a big deal… Then I immedately turned green and had to sit down for a while. I felt like I was going to puke for hours.

Maybe she had a slight concusion. Jogging the brain around can do that.

7

The twist is that there are two taxi drivers involved. Were they from the same company?

Maybe it is a workman’s comp/insurance fraud with both drivers involved.

8

Better than penis.

9

Don’t y’all watch the Allstate commercials with President Whatsisname? This could be part of a swoop and squat scam.
Upon reflection, nevermind. Probably not what that is.

10

Band name.
Also, any chance the driver in front wasn’t wearing her seat belt? Like cmyk said, it doesn’t take much of a blow to the head to mess you up pretty badly.

11

They were separate companies. The rear driver owns his own taxi and the front driver works for a company. The rear driver kept shaking his head and seemed to be incredulous that this was happening to him.

The front driver was wearing her seatbelt, and still had it on when I talked to her.

Unfortunately, there are people here who manipulate accidents and then claim injuries, which I assumed yesterday that was what he had planned.

It didn’t seem to me that she was acting like someone in genuine shock, but then IANAD so I don’t know.

Since the taxis were blocking traffic, I had them move them to the side of the road. Where this woman was almost completely incapacitated before, she was able to move her car over, and then went back to being almost completely incapacitated.

It’s a good thing that I’m not a famous general in WWII, or I would have slapped her for faking it. However, since IANAD, I don’t know enough to make a medical judgment.

The problem I saw was that the impact was too slow (less than 20 kph, I wrote mph in the OP, which would be about 12 mph) to cause much damage. The rear taxi was accelerating, so there would be more momentum than if he were decelerating at the same speed.

Here’s a picture which I took with my cell phone of the front taxi. As you can sort of see, there isn’t much damage. The tail lights weren’t even broken.

12

I asked another taxi driver about this, and he explained that under Japanese law when professional driver, including taxi drivers, cause traffic accidents which a person is injured, it falls under a different law and the party at fault loses their commercial license.

As part of how Japanese law and social customs work, if the victim agrees to “forgive” the offending party for matters, then it’s not prosecuted. Unfortunately, some people are aware of this, and then fake injuries in order to extort money from the driver.

I showed the picture to the taxi driver, and he thinks it’s a likely the driver in front wanting to get money.

13

While I was living in Seoul, a friend’s wife was involved in an accident. Somehow or other, the car she was driving ended up going through a guard rail and falling 10 feet or so to a parking lot below, and came to rest 100 yards or so from a waiting taxi.

A couple of days later, the taxi driver showed up in her hospital room demanding something like 5 million won (give or take $5000) for damage to his hearing… her family paid up.

14

In my non-expert opinion, there’s very close to zero chance that this caused even the most minor injury to the driver.

15

Damn gaijin. Getting all mixed up in the taxi-on-taxi crime spree…