Imagine you are driving down the road one day, traffic humming along like a familiar episode of Seinfeld.
Then, without warning, the car in front of you slams on its brakes. You barely have time to react before the car behind you plows into your bumper.
Both drivers jump out. They’re animated. Urgent. Strangely coordinated.
You’re left sitting there shaken, hurting, and wondering how a normal drive turned into a three-car collision in a matter of seconds.
This isn’t a Bizarro-world storyline where everything operates in reverse. It’s not sitcom chaos that resets in 22 minutes. It’s happening on real roads, in real neighborhoods, across our country, and at a growing rate.
For one driver in New York, a routine drive turned into a harrowing experience when a silver car abruptly cut off their SUV, stopped, and reversed into it. It was captured on the SUV’s dash cam. Just moments later, another car pulled up, and the SUV driver watched as they played musical chairs, switching seats in the cars. Initially suspecting road rage, the SUV driver became suspicious when the group quickly exchanged information and rushed to leave. The driver later learned it wasn’t an isolated event. Just two months earlier, the same vehicles were caught executing an identical scheme.
These “staged collisions” reveal a playbook used by organized fraud rings: stage the crash, fabricate injuries, team up with willing billboard attorneys, shady doctors, and litigation funders, and then exploit loopholes in the legal system to turn a profit.
These incidents aren’t confined to one city.
In New Orleans, a couple deliberately crashed into a semi-truck in 2015 and partnered with an attorney to generate $4.7 million in fraudulent claims before going to prison. Two prominent attorneys in New Orleans will soon stand trial for staging accidents to collect insurance money in a scheme dating back to 2011.
These crimes happen in Florida and California, too, where the latter saw more than 5,000 staged accidents in 2023 alone.
Insurers often settle and leave honest drivers to foot the bill through skyrocketing premiums. These manufactured injury claims put innocent drivers in danger and leave them with injuries and piles of bills.
In New York, where drivers already pay some of the highest premiums in the country, about $300 of the average annual increase stems directly from staged crashes. For small businesses, that’s money that could go toward wages, expansion, or lower consumer prices. State economies can’t grow when insurance rates outpace wages.
For trucking businesses, staged collisions have a major impact on their bottom line and, by extension, the costs of goods for all of us. In 2022 alone, litigation expenses across the automobile sector cost the U.S. economy $58 billion — revenue that could have created new jobs, strengthened supply chains, or eased inflationary pressures.
Staged collisions are a dangerous and costly crisis that is threatening public safety and household budgets across America, and the time to act is now.
At the federal level, Congress has an opportunity to restore fairness to the legal system. Reps. Mike Collins (R-GA) and Brandon Gill (R-TX) have a bill that would curb organized crime rings specifically targeting trucking businesses. Proposed legislation such as Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) bill, introduces some accountability that our courts desperately need by shedding light on how these schemes are funded, such as third-party litigation funding. A number of states are considering similar reforms to prevent abuse of the legal system. While not a one-stop fix, these combined efforts will increase transparency in our legislative system and close legal loopholes that contribute to a rise in fraudulent insurance schemes. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has acknowledged the severity of the problem and championed measures aimed at curbing staged crashes and cracking down on the abuses that inflate insurance rates. Other states should follow her lead.
U.S. households see an average $4,200 annually in higher costs due to our lawsuit system. Fraudulent lawsuits contribute to that amount, which is money that could have gone toward groceries, child care, or savings. This doesn’t have to be our reality. With federal and state legislation to combat fraud rings and legal loopholes, we can restore fairness to our roads and relief to family budgets.
It’s time to stop rewarding fraud and start protecting the people who play by the rules. With balanced reforms, we can restore safety to our roads and relief to family budgets — one honest mile at a time.
