If someone drives in to the back of you, it is highly likely that you will have a successful claim for personal injury compensation. We often refer to rear end collision accidents as ‘no brainers‘ because they are almost guaranteed winners.
If someone has hit you from behind, it usually means that they have failed to stop in time. Whether it is down to driving too fast, not braking quickly or hard enough, or not paying attention in general, it’s normally their fault.
So long as you are injured, you should have an easy claim to make. Even at low speeds it’s likely you will be left suffering with a whiplash type injury, which will normally affect your neck, back, and shoulder areas. It can also cause headaches and pins and needles sensations in the hands and arms as well.
Immediately after the accident, it’s likely you’ll feel absolutely fine. It normally takes a few hours for the symptoms of whiplash to become apparent. Some people will wake up the next day feeling like they have slept funny. In reality, it’s probably whiplash setting in.
There’s a lot of media hype over whiplash, and most of it is negative. My advice on this is simple – ignore the media rubbish about whiplash. It’s a genuine injury and it can have a big impact on your life. The insurance industry is massive and their profits are astounding. But when you make a whiplash claim, their profits get dented. This makes them unhappy, because their duty is to their shareholders. So they want to stop you from claiming to allow them to make more money.
Rising premiums have already been found to be caused by insurers themselves following government reports – not that you’ll hear about that in the press too much – and since some big legal fee reforms came in to play last year, some insurers have reported massive rises in profits with premiums falling by fractional amounts. In one recent story, one insurer’s profits had soared by a staggering 70% whilst premiums had been lowered by 3%.
I bet that’s got you thinking, hasn’t it?
Contrary to popular belief, lawyers do not make a shed load of money on road accidents. In fact, most people are now charged for making a claim through the use of a percentage deduction due to the legal fee reforms. For most cases we get around £500 as a fixed fee. That really is next to nothing compared to the work we need to do.
So you can claim if someone drives in to the back of you and you are genuinely injured as a result. And because the insurance for the driver at fault is there to cover not just vehicle damages, but your injury as well, you should pop a claim in.
It’s your legal right to do so. Unless you actually suffer a whiplash injury yourself, it’s easy to get pulled in to the negativity surrounding it. I’ve had it myself. I suffered for more than two years. I can, and have, medically proved this. In fact, I still get some issues today that I never had pre-accident.
And I’m certainly not the only one who is, or has been, in that boat.
