New Jersey Auto Insurance Fraud
Three New Jersey chiropractors hired people, known as "runners," to go through public records, find people who had recently been involved in auto accidents and then recruit those people to undergo chiropractic treatment. The chiropractors subsequently billed these patients' insurance companies for excessive treatment. This is an example of auto insurancefraud. Staged accident rings also commit auto insurance fraud by actually causing accidents and then billing the unsuspecting drivers' insurance companies. People who "invent" traffic injuries, or exaggerate those that they do have, is another common form of auto insurance fraud. Falsifying or altering an insurance card constitutes insurance fraud, as well. The problem with insurance fraud is that someone has to pay for it, and insurance companies must raise their rates in order to compensate for the money paid out in fraud. This costs the consumer up to $1,000 per year more in insurance premiums. Statewide, this results in millions of dollars lost to insurance fraud and, nationally, billions of dollars lost.
New Jersey Alcohol-Related Accidents
Every year in New Jersey there are roughly 32,000 autoaccidents where drivers have a blood alcohol content (BAC) level of .10 percent or higher. (The legal BAC limit in New Jersey is 0.08 percent.) So the drivers in these 32,000 accidents are well over the legal drunk driving limit. At this accident rate, there will be at least 10,000 injuries and 300 fatalities. Alcohol-related accidents where drivers have BACs between 0.08 and 0.09 percent will result in approximately 400 injuries and 30 fatalities, and when BACs are below 0.08 percent, this will result in an estimated 1,000 injured passengers or drivers and 70 deaths.
