The topic of this one comes from a chat me and some of my colleagues had yesterday at The Injury Lawyers HQ when we were discussing the recent claim that one of our team has had to make. It’s a whiplash claim, and for those of you who have ever suffered from the injury, you’ll know just how bad it can be.
I myself have suffered a whiplash injury, so based on my experience and the experiences of others I have chatted to, and some official reports you probably didn’t know about, here’s a little insight in to the real whiplash injury.
Is it real?
To quote Jon Snow on a Channel 4 news bulletin I remember seeing a few years ago, Britain allegedly has the “weakest necks in Europe” as we have the highest rate of claims for whiplash, and there has been much discussion and debate over the ‘compensation culture’ and the ‘whiplash epidemic.’ So let’s address these points to give you a proper insight in to whiplash claims.
Weakest Necks?
The real reason why there are more claims in the UK is actually down to claiming itself being a more popular thing to do. Just because a person doesn’t claim doesn’t mean they are not injured. I know people who have said to me they wouldn’t make a claim for whiplash, citing reasons that really is down to media fuelled myths.
Call me bias as I work for an injury law firm, but did you know that an official government report concluded that the real reason our premiums have gone up is because of referral companies and insurers pushing people in to making claims? We’ve blogged about this before when Jack Straw went on a mission to find out why members of his constituency were being pushed in to claiming by middlemen referrers. Read one of the news bulletins from the BBC here.
Insurers would sell their own policy holders information to a solicitor if they were in a non fault accident. As such, it was the insurers themselves pocketing millions of pounds and increasing claims by giving information to solicitors who would then initiate claims on their behalf. Garages, hire companies, recovery companies, and even the police were found to have been involved in selling your information for profit to solicitors willing to pay for it.
We’ve always known about it – but we have never been involved in the referral system as we have always believed it is wrong, and if you look at our years of blogging history you’ll see loads of posts from us telling people to avoid getting caught up in it. A lot of those posts are probably from me as well!
The government banned referral fees in April 2013 as a result. But this is all news you won’t hear about too much in the press because of the size of the insurance industry and their influence on media.
So its not about having the weakest necks in Europe – it’s all been down to primarily the insurers encouraging people to claim for their own financial gain.
Compensation Culture?
Official government reports also concluded that there is actually no such thing as a compensation culture, and that it was nothing more than a media fuelled myth. As I said earlier, the influence of the insurance industry is huge, and remember – they don’t want their profits denting by too many people making legitimate claims. They’re quite happy to receive money from solicitors for it though!
OK, so is it real?
Yes, of course it is. Let me go out on a limb here and ask you – am I someone who has committed a fraudulent act in making a whiplash claim and receiving compensation for it?
I made my claim having suffered a genuine injury, which was medically diagnosed by both doctors and a private Orthopaedic expert I was seen by. I also had physio as well.
Moving on to the chat I mentioned at the start of this blog, we were discussing that, in reality, whiplash never really goes away. I’ve settled my claim, but every now and then I still get burning sensations and pain in the affected areas which I never had before. My partner who was also in the same accident as me says the same. My colleague also said the same.
Its often referred to as whiplash syndrome.
It gets much better, but never really leaves you. I have family members who also said the same thing as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to end up taking time off work and end up laid in bed as a result of it – but there is pain and it remains there.
Don’t believe everything you read and hear in the news…
As with many things in life, with a big example being claiming social benefits, there are people that try and take advantage of the system. But that doesn’t mean the many genuine whiplash victims should suffer.
If you are suffering from whiplash, you’re not doing anything wrong in claiming – so get a lawyer and get the money that’s owed to you, because you’ll probably find that certain things about whiplash will never properly leave you; ever!