It's an interesting article, but the title ('we found fraud!') doesn't quite match the article, which continually points out that there are suspicious patterns in the data but that they aren't ironclad evidence of fraud.
That said ... yeah those particular VINs do look seriously dodgy to me! If nothing else, then the drivers reporting 5 crashes in a 12 month window probably shouldn't be driving.
I was in the left lane, stopped, signaling to make a left turn, when someone rear ended me because they didn't notice me.
I was stopped at a red light. The octogenarian behind me revved his engine, dropped into drive, and peeled out to rear end me a second time, because he “had places to be”. When I asked for his insurance, he drove off and I had to file a hit-and-run report with the police.
Just saying, sometimes you can be minding your own business and get really unlucky.
After reading the comments, I’d like to clarify a few things. This article isn’t meant to pitch a fraud scoring product. I recently discovered that several states publish VIN level data and, as a weekend project, decided to dig a bit deeper to see what I could learn. Given more time, I’d refine the analysis by normalizing against registration volumes, flagging outliers, and so on but for now I simply want to share an interesting glimpse at what ive found.
I don't see nearly enough complexity in this analysis to justify the claim of having found any insurance fraud.
Firstly, there's no account for correlation between the features identified. The article mentions VINs which have several single-vehicle accidents, for example, but someone who has one single-vehicle accident is probably more likely to have another. Switching coverage is another of those potentially-correlated features; if you claim and it bumps your premium, aren't you likely to shop around as a result?
Secondly, there's no attempt to account for the law of large numbers. It's incredibly unlikely that someone has three single vehicle accidents in a year, but because the probability of that is nonzero, we know that with enough vehicles on the road then someone is going to do it.
The article covers itself by acknowledging this, of course, but if you title your blog post "We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data" then you should actually do that.
Also, anyone who lives in an area where there are deer (or, kangaroos in australia) will tell you - strange sounding single car crashes late at night or early in the morning.. aren't that strange, that's when the deer (or kangaroos) are out and about. Where I grew up if someone had hit a kangaroo 3 times in a year it would be strange sounding for sure, but not that strange.
> The article mentions VINs which have several single-vehicle accidents, for example, but someone who has one single-vehicle accident is probably more likely to have another.
I haven't followed this story to know whether she's still driving, but one driver was involved in 7 crashes in 4 years, including two fatalities.
This is a marketing blog for some AI startup trying to sell AI voodoo to the insurance industry, so it just needs to sound like it might be useful for finding fraud.
I remember when some game developers started restricting installations of their game. There was an outcry, but then they said it was something like 100 installs in a certain period. It became clear their outliers were probably reasonable to restrict.
Maybe just investigating the outliers of the crashes could legitimately put them onto something.
Now it's time for the devil's advocate-- if the title was "some people get in a lot of accidents", would the top comment be "actually it's more likely that insurance fraud is the answer"
The conclusion is a little too strong for my tastes. Changing coverage looks sketchy, but I’d bet people shop around after a crash and the ensuing rate hike.
Being involved in multiple accidents could suggest fraud but it could also just be bad driving, maybe someone very young or old.
It’d really help to know the base rates for many of these things: how often do people switch insurance, for example?
> Some years ago, a police officer casually told me, “You should get a dashcam, insurance fraud is common around here.” His offhand comment stuck with me, but life moved on.
This is very, very good advice. Dashcams are cheap, and easy to install. Treat yourself - spending $80 on a camera could save you thousands in lawsuits, insurance hikes, costs of a new car, etc.
To me it seems nearly as important as having a smoke detector in your house.
I don't remember them being easy to install; you need mounts and in the case of a rear dashcam, someone to wire them into your rear seat. Car dealerships should advertise adding webcams while you're in there -- that would really make it easy.
Driving defensively and slowly is much more skin to having a smoke detector as it actually aims at preventing harm rather than just figuring out who’s at fault.
I had an incident where an older couple were stopped at a green light, angled down hill, in a snowstorm, with parking brake instead of foot pedal, in a borrowed vehicle.
When they asked me for insurance I just dragged it out and made friendly conversation(eventually giving the insurance slip). They got increasingly irate and panicked. Maybe because it was only a glancing blow and wouldn’t exceed even a slim deductible.
>After filtering out invalid VINs, we narrowed the dataset to roughly ~15 million crashes. (We also removed all drug and alcohol related crashes, since it’s unlikely someone committing insurance fraud would be under the influence.)
Which I immediately found extremely implausible. Seems like the author is very much NOT familiar with the type of people who commit insurance fraud.
In the next paragraph the article links to the FBI website on the fraud ring in Connecticut.
>After an autumn evening of drinking and using drugs in 2013, a group of friends got into an Audi A6 and drove to the remote Wilderness Road in Norwich, Connecticut. The car slid off the road, hitting a tree.
>Everyone in the car survived, but this seemingly typical crash was no accident.
>Despite their impairment, the driver and passengers had purposely planned the crash to collect the insurance money.
So yeah, don't exclude drug/alcohol related crashes. Also the author should read the first fucking sentence of the stuff they link. It's only six words in!
Yeah. I'm not a fraud expert, but "impaired judgement" is a common effect of alcohol, and "desperation" is a common effect of drug addiction, so it seems weird to assume that people using drugs are committing fraud at a lower rate than the overall population rate.
As a side note, I grew up in Norwich so it's funny to see it mentioned in that report as "remote" because there isn't really anything remote in Norwich. Wilderness Rd, despite its name, does a ring around Mohegan Park, which is an urban-ish park with some trees and a rose garden. You can walk to the rose garden from the high school, which I sometimes did. Anyway.
It’s very unfortunate that the worst people in society ruin insurance for everyone else - so that when you need to use it you are investigated as a criminal. Too many systems are being broken by a tiny minority of people with no skin in the game and no social consciousness.
1. Drink/drugs impair your judgment, making you more likely to commit fraud if you were on the fence, or the impulsive sort.
2. Drunk drivers get into multiple accidents, but some are able to keep evidence of impairment off the record (buddy on the force or the insurance co, etc.)
3. Drivers doing drugs that aren't detectable on the spot, and clear the body quickly, reducing evidence of drug use in crashes.
4. More people are likely to do drink/drugs at night, so if 1-3 are true, we should expect to see more crashes at night. Likewise for a lack of witnesses (fewer passengers or bystanders).
Most importantly, statistics are completely absent from the article. Does OP have any evidence these numbers wouldn't fit the correct random distribution? I know the point of fraud is to appear natural, but if done well, that means evidence has to be collected by other means, and this kind of analysis is only a weak signal.
As others have pointed out VIN as your primary level of detail is fairly flawed. You should also be filtering on vehicle registrations. A possible scenario here is someone owns their car, gets into an accident, repairs it or sells it off (insurance sell off). Someone else buys it gets difference insurance, and has an accident because its a new car to them. You would never know this vehicle story without integrating the registration history or at least buy and sell dates to know it has exchanged hands.
Yes Fraud is tricky, but a VIN does not equal a person (PII) committing the behavior, and these poor association attempts leave innocent people screwed by insurance companies. What makes this bad analysis annoying, is the constant caveats, if you know VIN associations don't prove fraud then maybe don't build some sort of risk scoring on it, and then try an sell it.
I read that as assuming the fraudsters were professionals in a sense, i.e. doing it in an organized way.
Wouldn't those kinds of criminals try to keep it looking clean?
I'm a little skeptical, it would be interesting to add odometer data, time of day, and distance from home. My driving is on low end of the collision risk spectrum because I don't drive much, mostly day time, and mostly routes that I've driven hundreds or thousands of times and where know the lines of sight and cadence of traffic. On the other hand I would expect more risk for someone who worked night shifts, did taxi or delivery type driving where they're often in unfamiliar areas, or just plain put in more miles. I would expect these effects to create a wide collision frequency spread even holding constant skill and good intentions.
I expected this to be about data found in the memory dump of a crashed process. (And was surprised they would post about this at all, given privacy issues.)
> we never expected that a side by side look at Vehicle Identification Numbers and crash timelines would hint at possible insurance fraud.
Uh... I'm not surprised at all that auto insurance fraud, which involves vehicle collisions, might show up in vehicle collision data. This is sensationalist crap.
camtarn|10 months ago
That said ... yeah those particular VINs do look seriously dodgy to me! If nothing else, then the drivers reporting 5 crashes in a 12 month window probably shouldn't be driving.
kstrauser|10 months ago
I was in the left lane, stopped, signaling to make a left turn, when someone rear ended me because they didn't notice me.
I was stopped at a red light. The octogenarian behind me revved his engine, dropped into drive, and peeled out to rear end me a second time, because he “had places to be”. When I asked for his insurance, he drove off and I had to file a hit-and-run report with the police.
Just saying, sometimes you can be minding your own business and get really unlucky.
Ostatnigrosh|10 months ago
gnfargbl|10 months ago
Firstly, there's no account for correlation between the features identified. The article mentions VINs which have several single-vehicle accidents, for example, but someone who has one single-vehicle accident is probably more likely to have another. Switching coverage is another of those potentially-correlated features; if you claim and it bumps your premium, aren't you likely to shop around as a result?
Secondly, there's no attempt to account for the law of large numbers. It's incredibly unlikely that someone has three single vehicle accidents in a year, but because the probability of that is nonzero, we know that with enough vehicles on the road then someone is going to do it.
The article covers itself by acknowledging this, of course, but if you title your blog post "We Found Insurance Fraud in Our Crash Data" then you should actually do that.
danielmarkbruce|10 months ago
macintux|10 months ago
I haven't followed this story to know whether she's still driving, but one driver was involved in 7 crashes in 4 years, including two fatalities.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2022/06/17/car-cra...
jacobsenscott|10 months ago
m463|10 months ago
Maybe just investigating the outliers of the crashes could legitimately put them onto something.
CYR1X|10 months ago
quantumgarbage|10 months ago
title: "we found insurance fraud in our crash data"
end of post: "Does this prove fraud? Absolutely not."
lmao
chickenzzzzu|10 months ago
mattkrause|10 months ago
Being involved in multiple accidents could suggest fraud but it could also just be bad driving, maybe someone very young or old.
It’d really help to know the base rates for many of these things: how often do people switch insurance, for example?
pavel_lishin|10 months ago
This is very, very good advice. Dashcams are cheap, and easy to install. Treat yourself - spending $80 on a camera could save you thousands in lawsuits, insurance hikes, costs of a new car, etc.
To me it seems nearly as important as having a smoke detector in your house.
Noumenon72|10 months ago
rsync|10 months ago
An excellent example of the absolutely awful behavior that can be encountered on the road:
https://www.reddit.com/r/scammers/comments/1g6xcng/attempt_t...
barbazoo|10 months ago
hermitShell|10 months ago
When they asked me for insurance I just dragged it out and made friendly conversation(eventually giving the insurance slip). They got increasingly irate and panicked. Maybe because it was only a glancing blow and wouldn’t exceed even a slim deductible.
Anyway, I should probably get a dash cam…
astura|10 months ago
>After filtering out invalid VINs, we narrowed the dataset to roughly ~15 million crashes. (We also removed all drug and alcohol related crashes, since it’s unlikely someone committing insurance fraud would be under the influence.)
Which I immediately found extremely implausible. Seems like the author is very much NOT familiar with the type of people who commit insurance fraud.
In the next paragraph the article links to the FBI website on the fraud ring in Connecticut.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/staged-accident-ring
Which says
>After an autumn evening of drinking and using drugs in 2013, a group of friends got into an Audi A6 and drove to the remote Wilderness Road in Norwich, Connecticut. The car slid off the road, hitting a tree.
>Everyone in the car survived, but this seemingly typical crash was no accident.
>Despite their impairment, the driver and passengers had purposely planned the crash to collect the insurance money.
So yeah, don't exclude drug/alcohol related crashes. Also the author should read the first fucking sentence of the stuff they link. It's only six words in!
stearns|10 months ago
Yeah. I'm not a fraud expert, but "impaired judgement" is a common effect of alcohol, and "desperation" is a common effect of drug addiction, so it seems weird to assume that people using drugs are committing fraud at a lower rate than the overall population rate.
As a side note, I grew up in Norwich so it's funny to see it mentioned in that report as "remote" because there isn't really anything remote in Norwich. Wilderness Rd, despite its name, does a ring around Mohegan Park, which is an urban-ish park with some trees and a rose garden. You can walk to the rose garden from the high school, which I sometimes did. Anyway.
uniqueuid|10 months ago
Given they have enough data, at some point it's perfectly reasonable to have cars with 5+ crashes per 12 months - just because of chance.
This is exactly why statistics was invented, damnit!
transcriptase|10 months ago
monkeyelite|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
gsibble|10 months ago
KingMob|10 months ago
1. Drink/drugs impair your judgment, making you more likely to commit fraud if you were on the fence, or the impulsive sort.
2. Drunk drivers get into multiple accidents, but some are able to keep evidence of impairment off the record (buddy on the force or the insurance co, etc.)
3. Drivers doing drugs that aren't detectable on the spot, and clear the body quickly, reducing evidence of drug use in crashes.
4. More people are likely to do drink/drugs at night, so if 1-3 are true, we should expect to see more crashes at night. Likewise for a lack of witnesses (fewer passengers or bystanders).
Most importantly, statistics are completely absent from the article. Does OP have any evidence these numbers wouldn't fit the correct random distribution? I know the point of fraud is to appear natural, but if done well, that means evidence has to be collected by other means, and this kind of analysis is only a weak signal.
BergAndCo|10 months ago
[deleted]
datax2|10 months ago
Yes Fraud is tricky, but a VIN does not equal a person (PII) committing the behavior, and these poor association attempts leave innocent people screwed by insurance companies. What makes this bad analysis annoying, is the constant caveats, if you know VIN associations don't prove fraud then maybe don't build some sort of risk scoring on it, and then try an sell it.
terrib1e|10 months ago
analog31|10 months ago
cratermoon|10 months ago
quantumgarbage|10 months ago
I guess that might be one explanation?
hedgehog|10 months ago
rurban|10 months ago
And it's not very wise to announce your metrics publicly. All fraudsters can read also.
josefritzishere|10 months ago
gpvos|10 months ago
unknown|10 months ago
[deleted]
EPWN3D|10 months ago
Uh... I'm not surprised at all that auto insurance fraud, which involves vehicle collisions, might show up in vehicle collision data. This is sensationalist crap.