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Whiplash injuries can cause people much distress, pain and an inconvenience. Here at The Injury Lawyers we know too well about the terrible effect whiplash can have on our clients. The injury does not only affect your health, but it can also affect any aspect of your life which can sometimes cause great difficulties. If you have suffered or are suffering from whiplash I am sure you know exactly what I am talking about.

Most people do not realise that they can claim compensation for a whiplash injury, they just think that the pain will eventually go away and everything will be ok.

However, most of the time whiplash injuries can last up to 6 months and if you have been injured as a result of someone else’s negligent actions you are entitled by law to claim for compensation.
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In April 2010 a new system to deal with road traffic accident claims was introduced and has made claiming quicker and more straightforward.  Before April 2010 the claims process could be a little bit slow – it could take nearly 4 months for the Defendant to admit liability in the most straightforward of cases, and then could take several more months, maybe a year or so, to get settled.  Now you could have your claim settled in just a few short of months!

Under the new system, if you have been involved in a relatively straightforward road traffic accident you will need to submit what is called a Claim Notification Form.  If you have the right injury lawyer on your side they will do this for you.  In any event it is quite straightforward and just outlines what happened in your accident and details those involved.

Once ready, this gets submitted online via the Ministry of Justice Portal to the Defendant’s insurer who has just one business day to acknowledge it.  The Defendant’s insurer then has a further 15 business days to come back with their position on liability – in other words, whether they admit or deny fault for the accident.  Compared to the old system which could take several months, this is a vast improvement.
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My experience tells me that some people find using roundabouts daunting.  Roundabouts can be of varying size – some have traffic lights on them and some are busier than others.  Because of this some people get nervous on approaching a roundabout and some people go further than this and take a route which avoids roundabouts altogether. 

This uncertainty or ‘fear’ of roundabouts can unfortunately cause accidents and at The Injury Lawyers we have successfully dealt with many roundabout accident claims.  If you were not at fault for your accident, you could well be entitled to compensation.

One of the most common problems with roundabouts, particularly those drivers are not familiar with them, is that people are unsure which lane they should be in and start to hesitate or make rash decisions.  This can cause accidents because you either get cut up by someone switching lanes or if someone suddenly stops someone else may go into the back of this vehicle. 
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Given that work takes up such a huge amount of our lives nowadays, we expect to be safe when working; i.e. not running in to any hazards whilst we get on with our jobs. Health and Safety in the workplace is of paramount importance, and employers must adhere to loads of rules and regulations to make sure employees do not come to harm whilst in the workplace.

Whilst differing rules and regulations apply more to varying areas of employment, one of the most basic areas of health and safety law that applies to any employment situation is tripping hazards!

We get a lot of enquiries from people looking to make compensation claims for tripping injuries at work. At the end of the day, it’s so easy to get caught out. A tile on the floor becomes raised and isn’t inspected or maintained regularly enough by the employer, and you have yourself an employee tripping over an obvious and dangerous defect. A colleague leaves some bags in a corridor and you walk straight in to them; the likelihood is you ending up on the floor, humiliated, and injured.
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If you have been involved in a road traffic accident and you were a passenger in one of the vehicles involved, you have excellent prospects of a successful claim for compensation. 

Even better, under a new system to deal with claims, you should get your compensation fast!

The reason you have excellent prospects of a successful claim are simple – it is highly unlikely that as a passenger you were to blame for the accident.  Short of severely distracting the driver, grabbing the steering wheel or pulling the handbrake, I cannot think of many circumstances where a passenger can be held to have caused a road traffic accident.  It doesn’t matter whether you were the passenger in the vehicle at fault either; you are still the innocent party and can be compensated al the same.
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Tripping accidents are relatively common – there are tonnes of hazards out there just waiting to, well literally, trip us up. If you have tripped over and want to know if you are due compensation for the injuries you have ended up with, you will need to contact a specialist personal injury lawyer to assess the case and perhaps take it on.

But in the meantime, here is a little advice about making a tripping accident claim and some facts you need to know about:

Who Is At Fault?
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A fair few people don’t make whiplash claims because they can’t be bothered with the ‘hassle’ or have been offered some money directly by an insurer and don’t think that getting an expert injury lawyer on board is worth it if when they may only get a couple of hundred pounds more compensation.  I would say this is the wrong way to approach things, and here’s why:

A new whiplash claiming system was introduced in April 2010 which drastically cut down the amount of time whiplash claiming takes.  Under the old system you had to get all your details together, produce a Letter of Claim which outlined these details and then send this to the Defendant who had a period of 21 days to acknowledge it and then a further 3 months from when they acknowledged the Letter of Claim to investigate your accident and come back with either an admission or denial of liability. 

For a very straightforward accident which was clearly the Defendant’s fault, it could take nearly 4 months for them to admit liability.  I could understand why some people got a little frustrated about this.  But this has all changed!
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At The Injury Lawyers we have found that some people don’t seem to realise that if they were the innocent passenger injured in a car crash, they have one of the best prospects of a successful claim for compensation you can get. 

It doesn’t matter whether the accident was the fault of the driver who’s car you were in or whether the accident was caused by some other vehicle – you were the passenger, and unless you did something daft like pull the handbrake, grab the steering wheel or severely distract the driver to cause the accident, there is little way you can be said to have been at fault for the accident. 

More often than not liability for your accident and injuries will be admitted straightaway, and it’s just a matter of getting medical evidence and settling your claim, which doesn’t take long at all.
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If I was given just a penny for each time I was asked how much someone’s whiplash claim was worth, I would be a very rich man!  (Well, almost!).  It is one of the most common, if not the most common, questions we get asked at The Injury Lawyers.

In the vast majority of whiplash claims we deal with, the innocent victim has been involved in a straightforward accident; say someone has driven into the back of their car, or hit them head on or pulled out of a side road into them.

These are claims where it should be easy to get an admission from the Defendant because it was clearly their fault and you would have thought that the amount of compensation people get will be similar.  Thing is, whiplash is a funny old injury that affects people in different ways, so the amount of compensation can differ a lot.
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I’m sure most of you reading this have gathered we are getting hit my the inevitable; I’ve always felt that after the incredible snow storms we weathered through in 2010 that it was only a matter of time we would see the worst of the seasons weather return.

The weather is dangerous – and accidents are likely.

Friday was when the midlands (or at least where I live!) was hit by the snow, and it laid very fast. I’d say there has been a good four or five settled inches which has largely survived the weekend of trampling footsteps and flattening car wheels. But waking up this morning to news of travel chaos and problems all across Britain’s travel infrastructure as planes are grounded at Heathrow, and motorists being urged to take extra care on the roads, is far too reminiscent of that insane November in 2010.
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