The story began with a 20-year-old Manitoban saying he’d fallen asleep at the wheel in a newer model Chevy Silverado, veering off the road and crashing into a few parked cars. Fortunately, he told investigators, he’d been travelling only five km/h over the limit in a 50 km/h zone; any faster and the damage might have been much worse.
But as Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) looked closer at his claim, the extent of the damage appeared excessive for a vehicle barely travelling over the speed limit. So the insurer’s technical team examined information stored in the pickup truck’s “event data recorder”—a crash-resistant device sufficiently akin to an airplane’s flight recorder that it is known by the same name: the “black box.”
“The recorder confirmed the speed of the vehicle, which contradicted what the driver told us,” says Brian Smiley, a spokesperson for MPI. In fact, at the moment of the crash, the vehicle had been travelling 140 km/h. The brakes were never applied. The seat belts were unbuckled.
As for the young man’s insurance claim? Denied. Manitoba’s Crown-owned insurance corporation saved $150,000, thanks in large part to technology that debunks the fabricated stories motorists tell in an attempt to get away with fraud.
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