Columbus residents cautioned about ‘brake checking' and staged accident risks
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A warning about a specific type of staged auto accident, sometimes referred to as brake checking, has gained much attention after being posted on social media.
The notice, which appeared on Nextdoor, quickly received several reactions and comments, with others acknowledging they had experienced similar situations.
'Beware! Brake checkers trying to cause intentional accidents on 670E and exited on Leonard Ave.,' the site member wrote.
Trace Adkins, Taylor Swift tribute join concert lineup for 2025 Ohio State Fair
When someone asked, 'What are brake checkers?' another answered, 'They pull in front of you fast from an adjacent lane then brake.'
'That's exactly what happened to me,' a person echoed on the platform. 'They zipped past me, pulled in front and braked hard.'
Another commenter described a highly suspicious accident they believed was most likely perpetrated by fraudsters.
'I had one get me at a light by stopping super fast at the green, and it was in a right curve,' the commenter wrote. 'I was looking and paying attention just didn't react fast enough, and they literally gave me a notebook (opened already to a blank page) & a pen; as soon as they jumped out of the car: I'm like nope I'm calling the law, THEY BOUNCED OUT SO FAST!'
'Thank you for the public notice,' said a grateful reader. 'Reminds me to put my dash cam in already!'
The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), a not-for-profit that educates about insurance crimes, refers to the scenario as the 'swoop-and-squat,' which can include additional vehicles driven by the criminals.
Delaware Hayes High School students win NASA app development challenge
'The driver of the 'squat' vehicle pulls in front of the victim's car,' the organization explains on its website. 'The driver of the 'swoop' vehicle pulls in front of the squat vehicle, causing the driver of the squat vehicle to hit his brakes. The victim cannot react in time and rear-ends the squat vehicle. The swoop vehicle races off and is not seen again. The victim then typically is responsible for any vehicle damage and personal injury to passengers in the squat vehicle.'
The group also noted that, when on the highway, the swoop-and-squat can involve three cars driven by bad actors. One auto is used to pin the victim in their lane while another person slams on the brakes in front of the unsuspecting driver.
The NICB recommends a few points to avoid becoming a victim of a staged accident, including:
Avoid tailgating.
Always call the police to an accident scene.
Document damage and the number of occupants in the other vehicles with cellphone photos.
Avoid people who suddenly appear and suggest specific doctors and attorneys. These people are called 'runners' and 'cappers.'
Be suspicious of tow trucks that show up when not called for service. They are often 'cappers' for body shops.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Attempted murder arrests after boy, 15, stabbed
Three teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a 15-year-old boy was stabbed in a country park. The boy was found injured on Margaret Terrace in New Herrington, Sunderland at about 18:10 BST on Friday, Northumbria Police said. He was taken to hospital for treatment and his injuries were described as not life-threatening. Two boys, aged 16, and one girl, 15, are being questioned in police custody. Ch Supt Nicola Walker said the force believed the boy was stabbed in Herrington Country Park. She appealed for witnesses to come forward. "We know this is a high footfall area, and it's likely there were lots of people in and around the park the time of the incident," she said. Follow BBC Sunderland on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Northumbria Police
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Teenager dies in crash and motorist is arrested
A teenage passenger has died in a crash and the driver of the car has been airlifted to hospital. An Audi S4 and Volkswagen Up collided on the A5087 Coast Road at Rampside, Barrow, in Cumbria, at about 13:00 BST on Friday. The passenger in the Volkswagen, a man in his late teens, was pronounced dead at the scene while the driver, also in his late teens, was airlifted to hospital in Preston, Cumbria Police said. The driver of the Audi, a 20-year-old man from Barrow, was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and driving whilst over the prescribed limit of a specified drug, but has been released pending further investigation. Cumbria Police has urged witnesses or anyone with dashcam footage to contact the force. Follow BBC Cumbria on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Cumbria Police
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
I Work At ‘Dateline.' Here's The 1 Question I Get Asked The Most — And My Answer Might Surprise You.
When I tell people I'm a writer at 'Dateline NBC,' I get a variety of reactions. Often I hear, 'Cool! What's Lester Holt really like?' Or 'Do you think that husband really disconnected his wife's oxygen tank while they were scuba diving on their honeymoon or was it just a bizarre accident?' However, sometimes I detect a look of mild horror, the kind I imagine trauma surgeons and cops get. It's a look that says, Wow, you spend every day immersed in all that darkness. Isn't it depressing? Actually ... no. When I first started at 'Dateline,' the show followed a different format. We covered consumer issues, did investigations and profiles (one was of a young and sunny Taylor Swift, no less), and offered plenty of human interest stories. But times change and so does the audience. True crime is where our audience went and we met it there with, I like to think, an arsenal of journalistic talents: expert storytelling that captures victims, families and killers in all their human, complicated glory; the highest standards of fairness; and maybe just as important as anything else, true respect for the lives that are taken and the loved ones left behind. Still, I admit the subject matter is dark. Nearly every episode involves a murder, or at least a disappearance. We do some powerful stories about the wrongfully convicted, but those people are usually convicted of killing someone. Death almost always figures into what happened in one way or another. I work on the 'open' of the show: the minute and a half at the top that highlights the most dramatic parts of the story. It includes things like: how many hearts the victim touched, how shocking the crime was, and how depraved the killer's actions were. In short, it's made up of the saddest, starkest, most potent stuff. Like my colleagues in this strange, very particular universe, I have developed an eye for small moments that reveal deep emotion, whether it's anger or grief. And I've written the words 'a chilling discovery,' 'a savage assault,' and 'a bizarre twist' more times than I care to count. So, yes … dark. And, of course, heartbreakingly sad. But depressing? No. Many of our greatest and most popular writers — including Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, Edgar Allen Poe and Agatha Christie, to name just a few — wrestle almost exclusively with sinister themes, like violence and murder. People don't tend to think of their work as 'depressing.' Spine-tingling? Yes. As well as engaging. Thought-provoking. I would argue one of the reasons great writers engage with this material is that the stakes in a murder mystery are so high. A human life is taken. In Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 'The Hours,' Virginia Woolf says, 'Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast.' But dark stories offer a flip side as well: the possibility for redemption, hope and understanding. This is such a fundamental paradigm that it resonates even with children. Studies show that fairy tales, many of which are scary, help children process difficult emotions like fear, envy and loneliness. This reassures children that they are not alone and that they're 'normal.' Fairy tales give children a safe place to explore these feelings and can teach them how to express and deal with them in an effective, constructive way. For grown-up readers, different kinds of mysteries may offer different kinds of sustenance. In an astute essay for Time magazine, award-winning novelist Tana French argues these stories mostly fall into one of two camps. The first, like those written by Christie, are about restoring order and seeing justice meted out. Her offerings are tidy, self-contained, feature a satisfying resolution — and go perfectly with a cup of tea. 'In a world that can often be chaotic and reasonless, we need these stories,' French writes. Others, which French dubs 'wild mysteries,' ask us to engage with deeper questions about human nature. 'What are we capable of? How much of who we are is determined by choice, by circumstance, or by nature?' French asks. 'The questions stay unanswered because they're unanswerable.' I like to think 'Dateline' gives viewers a bit of both kinds of stories. By the end of the hour, you will (almost always) know who committed the crime. You will know how. You will usually know why. But we take on the deeper, thornier questions, too, like how well do we ever really know another person — even one we're married to? Can a person simply snap? And, in an increasingly complicated world, what constitutes justice? I know some people say that shows like 'Dateline' serve up the trauma and pain of real people for the entertainment of our viewers. But the show's producers tell me that the victims' loved ones say talking about the case provides a kind of balm. They refer to their experience working with 'Dateline' as cathartic and say it leaves them feeling 'lighter.' They feel like someone 'important' is really listening to them and they trust that we will take their story seriously and tell it correctly. It can be a truly transformative experience for them. One producer also told me that 'Dateline' creates 'an important historical record of serious crime. Something that people can always look back on to see what really happened, told by the people it happened to.' In these times of rampant mis- and disinformation, this is no small thing. I believe our stories also resonate with viewers because, though the terrible people are truly terrible, the heroes we feature really are heroic — whether it's the detective who picks up the ice cold case and keeps digging until she finds the truth or the prosecutor who refuses to give up on the impossible-to-prove case or the sister whose hands grow raw from putting up 'missing' posters. These people's resilience struck me in an especially personal way several years ago. Though I'm fortunate to never have experienced violent crime, my mother died when I was a child. One otherwise-unremarkable day, I realized that I was older than she was when she passed. I thought I'd made my peace with her death years earlier, but on that day I was suddenly acutely aware of just how little time she'd been given on this planet. I was stewing in the sour juice of helplessness, bitterness and sadness when I started working on my next 'Dateline' story. As I began to go through the interview tapes to find the best soundbites, I found myself appreciating the friends and family members of the victim in a way I never had before. They had confronted the most terrible thing life could throw at them and somehow kept going in surprising, inspiring ways. The same is true of the loved ones in most of our 'Dateline' stories. Some of these people have actually helped solve cases. Others have found inventive ways to help other families going through similar trauma. But no matter what they've experienced, there's one thing they all share: Despite any apprehension about becoming public people — which in this day and age can be unpleasant or even dangerous — they went on national TV to make sure we knew who their murdered cousin, aunt or friend was. They spoke up to keep their memories alive. Their unbelievable strength has moved and healed me. I now carry some of their words around with me, like an aspirin for a headache, or a railing when I feel wobbly. I work on a program that some have called 'The Murder Show.' They're not wrong, but maybe toiling in a dark world makes the light more visible. Maybe it's only because of sadness that we even know and understand joy. Maybe it's injustice that allows us to appreciate justice. As Virginia Woolf might say, it's contrast. Lorna Graham is the author of 'Where You Once Belonged' and 'The Ghost of Greenwich Village,' and is a writer at 'Dateline NBC.' She has written numerous documentaries, including 'Auschwitz,' produced by Steven Spielberg and narrated by Meryl Streep, which competed at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Across numerous films, PSAs, and speeches, she's written for Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, and Morgan Freeman. She graduated from Barnard College and lives in Greenwich Village. Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@ My Experiences On 'Sex And The City' Left Me Reeling. A Recent Run-In With One Of Its Stars Left Me In Shock. I Was One Of The Most Famous Pop Stars In The World. No One Knew The Secret Pain I Hid. A Guy I Once Dated Is Now Famous, And It's As Weird As You'd Imagine
