If you have a quick look on this blog you will see The Injury Lawyers’ very own whiplash compensation calculator, which does exactly what is says on the tin – it instantly values your claim.
To find out how much your whiplash injury claim could be worth, all you have to do is click on the body part which you have injured, select your injury, and answer three dead easy questions about your accident, and you will be provided with an instant claim valuation.
So, if you have whiplash, then you would select the neck injury image, choose the severity and answer the three questions to get your valuation.
How does the whiplash calculator work and how accurate is it?
The whiplash compensation calculator uses the official Judicial Studies Board (JSB) guidelines to value your claim. These guidelines are what we use to value real claims. So, if you choose a minor whiplash injury to your back, you will get a valuation of between eight hundred and just over five thousand pounds normally, and if you choose a moderate whiplash injury you’ll receive a valuation between five thousand and seventeen thousand pounds normally.
As you can see though, there is quite a big gap between the valuations; but these are the official guidelines, and really the true value of your claim depends on your individual circumstances. This is not to say that the calculator is not accurate, but for whiplash injuries, we cannot put a precise value on your claim straightaway without knowing all the details about your claim.
Understanding severity of a whiplash injury
What you also have to consider is the definition of minor, moderate and severe.
There is no doubt that the first few days after your accident your whiplash will probably cause you absolute agony, which may mean you think you have severe whiplash and come back with a valuation of nearly £100,000. But what we actually mean by severe is not the actual pain you experience first, but the amount of pain as well as the length of time you have had your whiplash in its entirety.
If you have whiplash for a year and it is terrible throughout, you may well have a severe case of whiplash according to some experts; but if you are only in real pain for a week or two, despite this being awful, you probably have minor whiplash because the worst of it is over and done within a short period of time.
Just to make things that little bit more confusing, medical experts have different opinions about what is minor, moderate and severe whiplash. One medical expert may say you have minor whiplash, whereas another might say you have moderate whiplash. Even trickier, this opinion may differ to an expert injury lawyer who has dealt with whiplash claims for years!
Really, what we are saying is that despite having a whiplash compensation calculator and guidelines and even expert opinions, valuing a whiplash claim is difficult which is generally because it is hard to gauge the severity of persons whiplash.
Whiplash is inherently hard to self-diagnose. What you may consider severe may actually be minor in the eyes of the law, and this will affect the value of your whiplash claim. On average though, most claims are probably worth around £2,500 and fall into the minor category.
If you have used our whiplash compensation calculator and want to discuss the valuation further with an expert injury lawyer, feel free to get in touch with us at The Injury Lawyers today by calling 0800 634 7575.
