A man involved in a fender-bender in Surrey, B.C. managed to avoid a fake insurance claim, after traffic camera footage proved he was not at fault.
A pickup truck reversed into Wieslaw Jagielski’s SUV on a wet May 11, resulting in damage to the latter’s license plate and frame. The pick-up truck driver late blamed Jagielski for the incident, and the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia told Jagielski he had to prove his innocence.
“I was treated like I was guilty already… I didn’t expect that,” he told CTV News Vancouver. According to the report, ICBC mailed him two notices to ask for his side of the story. As he was the driver of the rear vehicle, the insurer told Jagielski to show that he did not drive into the pickup truck.
He managed to find proof through the traffic camera footage that captured the incident – but Jagielski had to pay a $378 bill to the city government to obtain it. “I was so happy because I had proof,” he said as quoted by the report.
ICBC did not comment on Jagielski’s case, but manager of special investigations, Chris Fairbridge, told CTV News that insurance fraud is increasingly a problem in B.C. He expected the number of fraud investigations to double this year from 5,000 to 10,000.
According to the ICBC, its special investigations unit has led to hundreds of charges and convictions over the last six years, with approximately 550 convictions from 2010 to 2015.
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