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It’s a common question for accident victims to ask when they seek our expert advice and quality representation – how much is my whiplash claim worth?

It’s actually a difficult question to answer correctly – the only way to value your claim for whiplash is with this combination:

• A medical report from an independent qualified medico-legal expert – normally a General Practitioner or an Orthopaedic Consultant for whiplash injuries.
• A fully qualified expert personal injury lawyer

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If you have been involved in an accident that was not your fault, you may be entitled to a claim for compensation.  Together with this, you may be entitled to claim for any financial losses you have suffered as a result of your accident. This is because compensation is meant to put you back in the position you would have been in (as far as reasonably possible) had you not suffered from the accident. This makes good and fair sense – why should you be the one to suffer and be out of pocket due to the negligence of another?

Our team at The Injury Lawyers will fight tooth and nail to get all of your financial losses back for you – there is, however, a duty to which you must adhere to as well – to mitigate your losses. By this, I mean to keep your losses to a minimum where possible. A good example of this is for a loss of earnings claim. A loss of earnings can be claimed if you have been absent from work due to your accident, and have been left unpaid, or receiving a reduced pay, such as Statutory Sick Pay. However, in order to mitigate your losses, once you are able to begin work again, or even begin work on lighter duties, you should start work immediately.

If you fail to mitigate your losses, the other side can refuse to pay you for it. With the example as set out above, they could not refuse to pay for all your loss of earnings, but only for the proportion that you incurred whilst you were unable to work. Hence, it is crucial that you make the effort to keep your losses to a minimum.
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So – how do you make a claim for compensation?

The best thing you can possibly do is to get in touch with a quality injury lawyer who specialises solely in personal injury claims, and who has years and years of experience.  They are best able to help you through your claim for compensation.  After all, they do this everyday for a living.  This professional injury lawyer will also be able to provide you with free legal advice to make sure that you have excellent prospects of success for your claim.

If your injury lawyer genuinely believes that you have a claim for compensation, they ask you for all the detailed circumstances of your accident so that they can produce a letter of claim.  A letter of claim is the first contact you – well, the injury lawyers on your behalf – have with the other side; that is the negligent third party.  This letter will detail the exact nature of your accident, the location of your accident, and details of your injury.  It will then proceed to set out why we believe the Defendant is negligent and is therefore responsible for your injuries and should pay you compensation. 
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A rear end shunt refers to a situation where a negligent driver collides into the rear of your car. This most commonly happens when the innocent party is sat stationery, and the negligent driver fails to take heed of the fact that traffic has stopped in front of him.

A common injury associated with these types of accidents is that of whiplash. Whiplash can be experienced by different people in different  – I have listed the common symptoms below:

• Pain, stiffness and/or tenderness in the neck area
• Reduced or even loss of mobility in the neck
• Pins and needles type sensations in the arms
• Recurrent  and severe headaches

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Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS), also know as Vibration White Finger, affects thousands of people each year.  It is an industrial disease and is normally found in people who have been exposed to large amounts of vibrations in their hands and/or arms.  The typical effects of this disease is for the sufferer to feel a sort of numbness in their fingers; in particularly severe cases, their fingers may turn white.  Worse still, the sufferer could lose all feeling in the affected hand, or their whole hand may actually turn white, or they may lose their fingers.  If you believe you have any of these symptoms, it would be wise to firstly consult a doctor – should you be diagnosed with HAVS, get in touch with a quality injury lawyer who will be able to advise you as to any potential claim you may have.

The people who tend to suffer from HAVS are manual labourers who are exposed to vibrations on a daily basis, having handled vibrating hand tools, such as chainsaws or drills, for prolonged periods of time.  If your professional injury lawyer believes you may have a claim for compensation, it will be because they believe that your employer has allowed you to be too frequently exposed to vibrations. 

It is interesting to know that in the last seven years the Government has paid compensation in a sum of £100m to those who have contracted HAVS.  Furthermore, in 1997 one case saw seven coal miners being awarded over £125,000 in compensation each having suffered HAVS as a result of their working activities.
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It seems no surprise that we are getting an increasing amount of road traffic accident claims. One reason for this could be the increasing amount of traffic on the roads, with many people not paying the necessary care and attention.

One accident hotspot that I will discuss in this blog is that of roundabouts. Many people can find roundabouts difficult to navigate and nerve wracking to tackle – especially some of the larger ones. If someone is not completely sure of where they are going and are unsure of which exit to take, and which lane to be in, this can be understandable – but it is sometimes these people who cause many of the accidents on our roundabouts.

Accidents can occur on a roundabout for a number of reasons – some of which I list below:
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I am all too aware of the dangers of the motorway, due to driving almost 70 miles a day to and from work! It is on these journeys that I have witnessed the aftermath of many accidents, and so come to write this blog today. Being such a frequent user of the motorway, I know that most of the time motorway journeys are uneventful and safe; however, with my experience of working in a personal injury law firm, I know that there are a small minority of drivers where this has not been the case.

Accidents can occur on motorways for many reasons – I have listed some of these reasons below:

• Driving too closely to the car in front and not taking heed of the traffic slowing down ahead.
• Not realising their junction is coming up soon and so cutting across a multitude of lanes to exit the motorway.
• Merging lanes without completing the proper checks, and so colliding with another vehicle.
• Undertaking – i.e. overtaking cars in a faster lane

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If you are looking at this blog you may be considering making an accident at work claim. At The Injury Lawyers, we know making a claim against your employer can be a challenging task to perform; however, our advice is that you can instruct lawyers to fight your corner and act on your behalf. Employers should also have insurance in place to deal with these types of situations – the insurers will investigate and come to a conclusion whether your employer was at fault – and if so, how much you should be fairly recompensed for that failure.

There are a number of areas of safety which your employer should consider:

Personal Protective Equipment
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It is an unfortunate fact that the number of road traffic accidents are increasing.  A major reason for this may be that there is an increased amount of traffic on the roads, together with people having busier lives – being in a rush and not taking the necessary care and attention when it comes to driving safely.

After suffering a road accident, you may think that it is too much hassle and bother to begin a claim for personal injury. However, this simply does not have to be the case, and there can be many reasons why bringing a claim for your road accident is beneficial:

A new, faster system
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Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE as it is more informally known, is equipment which can be used or worn to protect you against risks to your health and safety. PPE is something which you should not pay for – your employer should not even ask you for a contribution. They are solely responsible for supplying it to you.

It should be of note that PPE should only be used as a last port of call where no other methods act just as well, or better, at protecting you from risks to your health and safety at work. So, if your employer is giving you PPE in order to save money as a better method of protection is more costly, this is wrong.

Your employer has a duty to protect you as much as possible from risks to your health and safety. By simply providing you with the PPE, this is not fully completing their duty – they must also train their employees in how to use it and ensure it is maintained regularly and stored correctly.  Employers must also consider whether the PPE causes a danger in itself – by this I mean if there a chance of overheating whilst wearing or using PPE, or if your PPE could get caught up in machinery.
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