Workshop touts staging accidents to get business??

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"THE car ahead of you on an expressway brakes suddenly for no apparent reason. It causes a chain collision with your car and those behind you.

Within two minutes of the accident, a workshop agent appears and offers his repair services.

Are workshop touts staging accidents to get business?
"

(Full story at this link here)

From the reports, these are the various points I read about which I found to be suspiscious:

  1. Sudden braking by the car in front, for no apparent reason, especially when there's no traffic ahead of it.

  2. Prompt workshop agents who appear immediately at the scene of accident.
    (< 1 Min)

  3. Other 'victims' of the chain collision did not even bother to exchange particulars
    (A standard procedure for motorists involved in accidents.)

  4. The workshop lent the victim a Toyota Camry, at no cost, while it repaired her car.
    (Usually they will lend a car only if they know you, ie, its the workshop you frequent, but even so, it won't be a Camry, and definitely not for FREE)

  5. The workshop agent convinced the victim that taking down the vehicle numbers of the other two cars was sufficient and that there was no need to get the drivers' personal particulars.
    (In Singapore, the standard procedure is to exchange personal details, take pics of the damaged area(s), so on and so forth)

  6. The agent even dissuaded the victim from speaking to the other two drivers.

  7. The workshop replaced the damaged parts and did some paint work.Total cost of repairs amounted to 'more than $10,000', and the workshop said it would claim the money from the insurer of the driver behind her.
    (A check by the papers with five other workshops yielded estimates of between $2,000 and $5,000 for carrying out the same repairs.)
It does not take rocket science to determine the costs and profits ANY workshop will get to gain to "stage" such an accident.

Every single transaction will profit them by a margin of at least $8,000 (before subtracting away the "actors/actresses", repair costs for own "props", cost of spare parts/repair for the "targetted" vehicle, etc). To any businessman, this is definitely good money.

It was mentioned in the report, that the association gets around 2 complaints a month with regards to "staged accidents". For every 2 accidents complaint, I am sure there are more out there which aint reported.

Let's put it at a very forgiving hypothesis of 4 such accidents staged by the workshop each month.

4 x $8,000 = $32,000.

And not forgetting that the workshop have its own drive-in customers and regulars. This $32,000 alone is a very substantial amount, I would call it EXTRA MONEY.

Let's not talk about the ethical side of the matter, I am sure most (if not all), will agree that its NOT ETHICAL to do this.

It's just like bringing your cars/bikes to the workshop to repair, then the mechanic PURPOSELY forget to tighten a screw or two, and when the thing gets loose and then spoilt, you will have to go back to the workshop to repair it, then they start telling you that something somewhere is wrong again. The cycle goes on. They get "return business", but is it ETHICAL?

NO!

What worries me ain't the inethical way they are doing their business(es), but more to the way they were prepared to endanger the life of others just to earn more money.

This ain't inethical, this is INHUMANE.

For every accident staged, the lives of others are endangered.

Imagine this scenario, a high speed accident occured, in the car behind, there's an old lady, young children, pregnant mother-to-be.

Can you understand how many fragile and helpless life is at stake ?

I seriously hope this accidents are purely in the sense of the word - Accident, and not staged just to earn some dirty money.

What do you guys think ?

Do you think such staged accidents exist ?

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This page contains a single entry by Ah Sam published on September 8, 2008 3:30 PM.

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