UK Is the Whiplash Compensation Capital of Europe

yourcaraccidentclaim
July 31, 2012

UK is the whiplash capital of Europe and the reason for this is that one person out of every 140 people claims for whiplash injury every year. A whiplash injury occurs when the individual’s soft tissue present in the spine gets strained and stretched due to a sudden and forceful movement, like a hit received from a car behind while sitting in a car. This situation is quiet crucial to diagnose but the individuals exaggerate or fake it easily thereby making claims for their injury. Numerous surveys and researches have shown that in UK, about 1200 individuals make whiplash claims every day. This is six times higher than the number of individuals who make claims for work place related injuries every year. Statistics have shown that about three-quarters of claims made due to personal injury in UK are basically for whiplash.

This creates a very difficult situation for the insurance companies who have to pay for the whiplash claims. Insurers are paying around 2 billion Euros every year for whiplash claims. As a result, insurance companies are increasing their insurance premium rate which is affecting the number of clients that purchase their insurance policies. The main reason for this issue is that whiplash injury is difficult to diagnose and so fraudsters are taking full advantage of it. The best solution to this problem will be to improve the treatment options so that such cases can be brought under control and fake individuals claiming for a whiplash compensation claim, can be punished. For this, strict and experienced authorities have to be established, who can diagnose as well as genuinely treat whiplash from developing.

Government as well as private authorities have to raise consumer awareness and explain them the importance of safe driving, maintain appropriate space between vehicles, and so on. If this can be done effectively, then cases of whiplash injury as well as whiplash claims will not arise very frequently. Whiplash can also be described as a rear end collision, where one car which is stationery, collides with another car which is moving, at the rear part of it. This usually occurs when traffic is not controlled properly. So traffic controllers also have to become alert so that this kind of situation can be aborted. They have to manage traffic in such a way so that the speed of vehicles can be maintained and rash vehicle drivers applying hard brakes can be punished severely.

Tony is a personal injury claims specialist that usually expresses his opinions on the industry over at www.yourcaraccidentclaim.co.uk.