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In a personal injury claim you can be given general guidelines as to the likely compensation you are entitled to receive. However, the amount of compensation is accurately calculated upon the receipt of medical evidence in respect of your accident related injuries.

Whiplash is probably one of the easiest to assess – but the specific amount to be placed on your injuries will depend on several aspects.

The Judicial Studies Board, who provide guidelines to your legal representatives, have set out the following in order to help us assess your claim for compensation and the value of it. The assessment of compensation for your injuries will consider the following:

• The seriousness of your injuries and whether you have suffered any broken bones, any disfigurement or any physical or mental impairment
• Whether you are likely to make a full recovery or whether you are likely to suffer any long term affects/side effects.
• Whether you have experienced any loss of earnings/income or are likely to experience any loss of earnings in the future as a result of the accident
• The level of pain you have suffered or are still suffering
• How your day to day living has been affected by the injuries

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Well this has probably happened to most of us – we get on a bus and before we have the chance to sit down, the bus pulls away. Now most people would still be able to successfully sit themselves down safely as there are hand rails to hold onto to keep your balance. However most of us would probably say that the bus driver should wait until passengers are seated. Whatever we think, in law is a bus driver negligent for pulling away before a passenger is seated?

Put simply there is no specific duty on a bus driver to ensure passengers are seated before pulling away. Although bus drivers do have to take reasonable care to ensure that injury is not caused as a result of the bus pulling away abruptly or before a passenger is seated. This means that extra care is needed in the case of elderly passengers for example. Elderly passengers are identified as being more at risk of injury if a bus pulls away before they are seated for obvious reasons. This is because they may not have the strength or balance to keep on their feet. Looking at the bus driver’s point of view, they are running to a strict timetable and if they are behind they will naturally be trying to catch up. However safety should always be paramount.
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Answering this question is similar to answering “how long is a piece of string?” Unfortunately, it is impossible to say exactly how long your claim will take as every claim is, of course, different. However, there are certain time frames that apply to a whiplash claim which I will discuss further in this blog.

Under the new Road Traffic Accident Protocol, defendants have 15 working days to respond to a claim with an admission or denial of liability. This means that they basically have to come back saying that they accept fault for the accident or don’t.  This new time frame speeds the process up from the old system where road traffic accidents would go through the personal injury protocol, comprising of a 21 day acknowledgement period and 3 further months for investigation.
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People are often worried about returning to work when they’re suffering from whiplash. It normally comes down to one of three things:

1. You’re worried you can’t work because of the pain and will lose out on earnings.
2. You’re worried that you can work, but the pain will be uncomfortable.
3. You’re worried about not being able to claim because you are able to work.

In law, you have a duty to mitigate your loss. You also have a duty to follow medical advice to make sure you don’t worsen your symptoms. So it’s best to seek medical advice and find out whether your doctor feels you are able to work or not. If not, then you should probably follow their advice and stay away from work. Any earnings you lose out on can be recovered as part of the claim in most circumstances.

If you can work, or you’re in the category of people who must work to make ends meet, then you can still make a claim. The other side isn’t necessarily going to raise the argument that you can’t be in any pain because you are able to work. Whiplash didn’t stop me from working, and they haven’t raised it with me. Yes, I was in pain; but it wasn’t pain enough to warrant loads of time off work and then claiming lost earnings fees from the other side. If you can work, and you’re medically fit to do so, you shouldn’t worry about it affecting the claim.
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With any personal injury claim, you can seek to recover compensation for the pain and suffering that your injuries have caused (this is called General Damages) and you can seek to recover compensation for any losses or expenses that you have sustained as a result of the accident or your injuries (this is called Special Damages).

Special Damages can cover a wide range of things. In terms of a suffering a whiplash injury, Special Damages could be awarded for the care and assistance that you have received.
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Symptoms of whiplash can range from straight-forward pain in the neck, back & shoulders to pins and needles and serious mobility problems. Whiplash is actually more complicated than most people think; unless you have suffered it yourself, you won’t really know what I am talking about.

Whiplash is common in car accidents. The impact that causes you to jolt back and forth, or sideways, results in the ligaments and tendons in the neck, shoulders, and back being stretched beyond their normal range of movement. This is the mechanics of how the injury is caused. The pain and stiffness will normally take 12 – 48 hours to make itself known. Many people feel absolutely fine immediately after an accident, only to wake up the next day in agony.

You may have limited mobility – i.e. you might struggle to move your neck and back as well as you could before. You may also suffer from headaches or pins and needles in the arms. Sometimes you may even feel sick, dizzy, or suffer from a stint of vertigo.

The best thing to do is see your GP or pop down to a walk in centre to get a formal diagnosis in your medical records. Other than advise you to take anti-inflammatory medication and pain killers, as well as doing a few simple neck exercises, there isn’t a great deal that can be done right at the start.
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Contrary to some beliefs, children can sustain a whiplash injury. Generally they may not be as badly affected as adults, but a car accident can easily leave your child suffering with the same symptoms in the neck, back, and shoulder area.

Whiplash is caused by the ligaments and tendons in the neck, back, and shoulder areas being stretched beyond their normal range of movement. So this can happen whether you are an adult or a child.

Children have the right to make a claim in exactly the same way an adult is entitled to. There are a couple of differences to the claims process – for one, the child will need a litigation friend to act on their behalf, given that the law doesn’t commonly allow them to bring a claim themselves (rather obviously). This is normally a parent or guardian / family member, and can even be you if you were in the same accident.

The other major difference is that an Infant Approval Hearing will normally take place at the end of the claim. This is a simple hearing for a Judge to confirm that they are happy with the amount that has been accepted between us and the other insurers. As the child is under the age of 18, the Court should always intervene to make sure that any offers that are agreed are fair to make sure the best interests of the child are looked after.
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Whiplash is the most common injury sustained in road traffic accidents and therefore our injury blog will focus particularly on how long it takes to resolve a whiplash claim for a road accident. Of course, if you have sustained whiplash in a way other than a road accident, the process may be a little different and therefore you should contact us directly to ascertain the best route in your particular circumstance.

Whiplash can be extremely painful and debilitating as it mainly affects the movement of the neck, back and shoulders. It is caused by the jolting action of your head being thrown forward and backwards at quick speed. This type of injury can lead to other losses such as loss of earnings and expensive medical fees and therefore claiming for compensation may be essential.

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Walking round the town centre on a Friday or Saturday night, you can see why drunken pedestrians get involved in accidents. There is often no regard for the vehicles on the road and a lot of the time the pedestrians are just stepping out into the roads.

If a drunken pedestrian is involved in an accident, although the courts normally favour pedestrians in road traffic accidents, it is not likely that a claim for negligence against the driver will be successful.

There is a recent case in law that highlights this; Stewart v Glaze 2009. In this case Mr Stewart was sitting at a bus stop with his friend having been out drinking. Mr Stewart had consumed around 5-7 pints and was drunk. Mr Glaze was driving on the road towards the bus stop when Mr Stewart ran into the road which resulted in a collision with Mr Glaze’s vehicle. Mr Stewart suffered severe head injuries and was left in a vegetative state. The Judge held that Mr Glaze was not negligent in this case. There was no evidence to suggest that he was not driving carefully and that it was unreasonable to say that Mr Glaze should have seen Mr Stewart at the precise moment he decided to charge into the road. On the facts of this case, there was absolutely no reason to find that Glaze had been negligent.
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Roundabouts can be huge and complicate or small on simple; but on occasions either can still be very confusing to motorists. This means that accidents on roundabouts are one of the most common types of road traffic accidents we deal with here at The Injury Lawyers.

The situation we are dealing with in this blog is when a vehicle is in the wrong lane for the exit off the roundabout; which happens more than you might think.
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