But the cogent point is not about whether you have made a mistake and made yourself vulnerable. The cogent point is that someone has gone out to deliberately cause a collision. When that happens the fool who is too close is a victim. They haven't caused an accident or a collision. Without an accident then the usual logic of the person behind being too close does not apply. The collision was caused by the person in front who did it deliberately with that in mind. Because of the intent, this is not an accident, the person behind was RAMMED.
Anything else is ridiculous. It smacks of dogmatic adherence to IAM/ROSPA standards which are for safe driving and avoiding accidents. They don't take into account situations where someone has aimed their car at yours.
I agree with you on the point of intent, however the reason people fall victim to these scams is because they are susceptible to this sort of crash which can also happen due to innocent reasons on the part of the car in front.
I have little doubt that the driver in the OP is a scammer, however if a child had run out then the OP would have been blamed for the accident with no comeback at all (technically the fault would be on the child though blame is never going to follow, not in this day and age) and thus regardless of the other driver's intentions the OP needs to learn from this and be more careful next time.
What if you parked behind someone at the lights and they reversed into you? It's the same thing. They suckered you into being close enough to cause a collision where you would be blamed.
That is a really annoying one, there is no "suckering" involved as it'll get you even if you do sit far enough back that you can see both wheels touch the road. It's also pretty much impossible to prove without witnesses, also in some cars, with certain driving styles, it's pretty easy to select reverse instead of 1st without realising so it may not even be intentional, and if it's an old duffer driving they may not have even noticed that they've done it and protest their innocence all the way.
If you're in a queue at the lights and you see reverse lights come on ahead of you, I would suggest you back off and hope the guy behind you does the same, beep your horn or take a picture (not with a mobile phone obviously, that would be illegal)
The fact that all this goes on is why as soon as I've got the Car PC re-installed into my Nissan, I'll be constantly recording video footage of my travels (deleted after 15 minutes) as we still haven't touched the other common scam where someone just pulls in front of you then slams on in a pre determined location where all their mates are hanging out on the street corner to be witnesses.
which one...? *goes looking again...*