Run over for money
“I’m not sure that he deliberately threw himself in front of my car, but more and more I tend to think that he did. That day the roads were seriously iced over. I was going uphill, the car was skidding. The speedometer showed 15 kilometers per hour. Suddenly there he was: standing on the curb, totally drunk and swaying. Still he kept staring at my car. I slowed down little, and when I drew level with him, he suddenly fell in front of me. I hit him. It’s hard to convey how shocked I was. The first thing that occurred to me was that I’d killed a man. Hardly had I jumped out of the car, when he dashed for me, shouting obscenities. He demanded immediate compensation for his badly hurt head. At first I was confused. However, in a couple of minutes I managed to calm him down and took him to a hospital. He didn’t mind. My colleagues had hardly finished examining him, when a girl burst into my consulting room, claiming to be his daughter. She made a terrible fuss, in the process of which she demanded that I immediately give her fifty dollars for her father’s treatment. I promised to bring the money the next day. She agreed and left. Then I went to the State Auto Inspection (DAI) and told them my story. After my car has been examined and after they looked through the results of the medical examination of the injured man (nothing serious: no brain concussion, no internal bleeding, no fractures were revealed), the DAI inspectors advised me not to pay under any circumstances. Otherwise, they said, he would never let me go. They recommended that in settling the dispute I should go to civil court. But it never went that far. His daughter wouldn’t even hear of it and demanded compensation. What’s more, alongside the head injury she mentioned an ulcer on her father’s leg which, she said, could cause gangrene. However, as the days passed she cut down her demands. She started with fifty dollars, then it was twenty, and in the end she demanded that I cover what she spent on public transportation. And that’s where it ended.”
This story, told by Olena Potapova (pseudonym), a physician at one Zaporizhzhia hospital, is linked with another incident highlighted in the local press. Not so long ago near Melitopol a foreign-made vehicle struck and killed a bicycle rider. The driver was waiting for the court to hear the case. For unknown reasons the family of the deceased repented, telling the press that the driver was not to blame and staging traffic accidents was the family’s main source of income. The main role on the highway was assigned to the head of the family. Sitting on a bicycle at the roadside of Moscow-Simferopol highway, he waited for the signal. At few meters away by some bushes, his son was estimating the passing foreign-made vehicles. Al the same time a nephew of the willing victim calculated the approximate speed of the vehicle. At a certain moment the father was given the signal. The rest was a matter of technique. A few meters from the approaching vehicle the man started riding his bicycle. Then he made a sudden left turn and found himself under the wheels. According to the members of the family, practicing at home, the father mastered a perfect way to make a lucky fall. The collision with the vehicle, as a rule, inflicted no life- threatening injuries. The father got away with a little fright, which was lavishly compensated by the driver. The money received was enough to support not only his children, but also his grandchildren. But his luck ran out the fifth time. Most probably, the nephew miscalculated the velocity of the vehicle. The article on this so-called kamikaze of success had great repercussions. People started to come forward, discussing how big was the scale of this kind of business. They told about the homeless on purpose provoking the dogs guarding fancy dachas to attack them, about wedding guests (especially in rural areas), who when the liquor flowed most freely would provoke the happy groom into a fight and then bravely bear getting beat up. Once the groom with his chums nearly killed such a rascal, but in the morning swore to make it up to him.
The deputy chief of the administrative department of the DAI of Ukraine in Zaporizhzhia oblast, Volodymyr CHORNOVY downplays scale of such risky business on the roads. “The incident with the deceased head of household is a unique one, and, frankly speaking, arouses serious doubts about the veracity of the story told by his relatives. Most probably there was no traffic accident caused on purpose. And, though the decision lies with the court, in my opinion the driver bribed the family. The version of the road accident is a hoax, and it will be easy to prove it. In my opinion, the relatives will say the contrary in court, and will deny the information that appeared in the press. Otherwise, the driver could be acquitted and they end up behind bars. Extortion is a different matter. Law enforcement has repeatedly encountered cases of blackmail. At first both sides involved in the road accident decide to settle everything on their own without turning to a third party. Then, especially when the person injured in the accident was a pedestrian, he starts to try to make money from the situation, producing fake health certificates about the appalling state of his health as a result of the accident, and virtually sucks the driver’s blood until the latter finally summons up to courage and turns to the police for help.”
Vyacheslav TRUNOV, who works in the department of Zaporizhzhia Public Prosecutor’s Office, investigating the causes of road accidents, expresses the same viewpoint. In his opinion, no thinking person, even one driven into despair by unemployment, will risk going into the business of throwing themselves in front of cars. There are more than enough road accidents involving pedestrians. However, according to statistics, in eighty cases out of a hundred the technical investigation or the court (if a person was killed as a result of the accident) the driver is acquitted. “Let’s assume that the deliberately caused accidents do exist. But I doubt it that it will be so simple for the injured to catch his victim on the hook of blackmail. But then in this world anything is possible.” But in any case, the undeniable fact is that fraud is one of the easiest and, more importantly, one of the fastest ways to make money. And it enjoys more and more popularity among the people. Like they say, the less you wear, the wiser you are. What is terrifying is how Ukrainians can risk their lives to survive.
INCIDENTALLY
Games like those played by the stunt man from Zaporizhzhia are like Russian roulette, for sooner or later such a dangerous action as a jumping in front of a car in order to get compensation for injuries could incur the added expense of burying the daredevil. According to the head of the fund for protection of the injured of the Motor (transport) Bureau of Ukraine, Tetiana BABENKO, an accident victim can receive compensation in two cases. First, if the driver who hit the pedestrian is insured and has a sense of civic responsibility. In this case all the losses incurred as a result of temporary incapability of the injured are compensated not by the person to blame for the accident but by the insurance company. The second case is if the unlucky pedestrian is left lying on the roadway by a hit-and-run driver. Then compensation to the injured or his family (if unlucky crossing had fatal consequences) is paid by the Motor Bureau of Ukraine. In any case the guilt of the driver must be proven in advance by the State Auto Inspection. And only after guilt has been proven can the injured expect to receive compensation. As to the mental condition of the Zaporizhzhia kamikaze, Ms. Babenko thinks that such people need to seek help from a psychologist, for making money in such an original way is a very hazardous affair.
As The Day was told in the laboratory of individual social psychology of the Institute of Social and Political Psychology, in most such cases the injured is pushed into it by inner stress enhanced by their miserable economic situation. The opinion of psychologists and the absence of statistics on the cases described let us make two conclusions. The first is that to track down phenomena of this kind and to expose such fraud is extremely difficult. The second is more optimistic: such a way of making money is so far not widespread in Ukraine, thank God.
