A Hamilton (Canada) area man’s dashcam may have saved him a pricey car insurance payout – and maybe even from falling victim to an insurance scam, an industry expert says. While he can’t know for sure, Craig Schneider says he feels like he narrowly avoided being taken advantage of and now wants people to know how useful dashcams can be.

"You can get a dashcam for 80 bucks and protect yourself," Schneider told CBC Hamilton. "I still get infuriated by it – that there are people out there who would do this."

“We’ve seen many staged collisions where people are setting up crashes to take advantage of auto insurance claims,” states Pete Karageorgos, director of consumer and industry relations for Ontario with the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

The incident happened in the McDonalds parking lot at the corner of Barton Street East and Lottridge Street, Schneider says. He was pulling out of the drive-thru when he saw a man get into the passenger side door of a large silver truck.

The truck pulled towards the parking lot’s exit, and Schneider pulled up behind them. He says he looked to his left, and "sure enough, in the corner of my eye I see movement."

"I lay on the horn and boom – they smashed into me." ‘He started screaming at me’

Though the video has no sound, Schneider says that’s when one of the men jumped out of the truck and immediately started yelling at him. “He started screaming at me and saying I wasn’t paying attention and saying I had to pay for the damage,” he said.