South Africa: Holiday warning as scam injuries surge

A trend in South Africa of people jumping in front of slow-moving cars to get compensation payouts for injuries drew a warning Tuesday from the government’s National Road Accident Fund.

In a statement, it said the phenomenon of people intentionally getting hit near intersections and stop streets was becoming a significant problem. At the same time, it acknowledged that some cases might have been driven by poverty and desperation at an expensive time of the year.

“We acknowledge road users may face socioeconomic challenges,” the fund said.

The RAF allows people to claim compensation from a national fund if injured in car crashes.

But it warned that it was clamping down on bogus claims after identifying the new trend. It said people were waiting for vehicles to “slow down enough that they don’t get killed” before throwing themselves in front of or against the cars to fake an accident.

“The RAF does not compensate someone who intentionally causes a motor vehicle accident, even if this results in serious injuries,” it said.

The fund didn’t say how many cases of people intentionally getting hit by cars it had recorded but said it had rejected nearly 50,000 claims in the period between February 2022 and February this year, some of them because they were fraudulent.

The warning comes ahead of South Africa’s notoriously dangerous holiday season on the roads. The RAF said that on average more than 1,500 people are killed in road accidents in South Africa during the holiday period between the start of December and Jan. 11. Around 40% of those fatalities are pedestrians, it said.

“Road users are urged to also remember that the fund does not compensate for the death itself but only pays for the actual costs to cremate the deceased or bury them in a grave,” the fund said in a grim holiday message.

The RAF said it paid out $2.5 billion in claims in the 2023-2024 financial year.