This type of insurance fraud is so common in Russia that dash cams are pretty much a necessity for anyone who owns a car. YouTube is glutted with videos just like this, including humorous ones where you see people literally stepping off the sidewalk into traffic, running ~100 meters straight into the front of a car and feigning serious injury, etc.

This reminds me of a car commercial I saw a few years back. Woman barely taps the car in front of her, and the other driver starts crying foul, pain, lawsuit, etc. The idea was that the car looked rich, but was actually affordable.

I always wondered if somebody got fired over that marketing disaster.

If I had a dashcam type system, I would want the ability to dump it all with a remote key press type function. Why give the cops anything. That is why I will never do the Progressive Nice driver system. It can be evidence against you.

I'd want a dash cam, plus cams all over my property, and finally a means to store the videos safely at some remote location so that the police cannot confiscate it.

And I would video record every police encounter I ever had.

I'm with Patrick. I'm sorta surprised this isn't more common in the US already. I'd love a system that recorded all 4 directions as well as any backup camera when in use. I wouldn't be surprised to see these become an option or a fairly large aftermarket system in a few years. Would've loved to show the woman in the BMW (I own a Lexus) who backed into me a couple weeks ago when parking in an Albertson's parking lot, who then tried to claim that I had backed into her. Thankfully the minor bumper tap wasn't worth bothering with in the end anyway.

I've thought about getting a basic camera/PVR system for my house (or get one installed when I seriously remodel my house, which is on deck) but without a way to upload to some form of offsite when triggered in some fashion (either manually or automatically) it'd have a serious week point. Most of the systems have horrid resolution that doesn't help much with actually identifying people anyway. My nephew's car was broken into a few weeks ago (got the Macbookpro I'd given him in payment for a ton of yard work he'd done for me a couple years ago) and my sister's boyfriend had put in a cam/PVR setup. Caught the whole thing on video, can't actually see the person's face or anything identifiable at all. Plus the spider that'd taken up residence over part of the view didn't help.

Luckily for my nephew, he'd just signed up for one of the security software bits and has gotten data recorded from said software. Pictures of the person with it, IP address with dates/times, etc. Need to find out if he's made any progress with the police. Based on Amy's own experience with her car, I'm assuming he's going to have to do all the leg work and hand it to the cops before anything actually happens though.

However, I also do see Jim's point that it could definitely be used against you.