Whiplash Claims – How To Prove Whiplash And Claim Compensation

Yes, you can make a claim. IMPORTANT: If your injuries include bone damage/lacerations or if the accident was on or before 31st May 2021, contact us immediately. Our Solicitors can act for you on a No Win No Fee basis.

However, if your accident was after 1st June 2021 (unless you have suffered a bony injury or laceration) you will be subject to the whiplash reforms. Effectively, these reforms mean that you can’t use a Solicitor (you can, but you can’t recover legal costs so a Solicitor would have to deduct up to 50% of any award to enable them to cover their costs. This is not something we would entertain as it is simply unfair on the client and it would be unethical to do so.

If you are subject to the whiplash reforms, you can now pursue a claim without legal representation via the official injury claim website. Unfortunately, whiplash settlement values have been reduced considerably by the insurers in their success in convincing the government to bring in these changes. Where settlement values for whiplash used to range in from around £1350 at the very minor end and up to £2-£3k in many cases, claimants will now receive around 1/4 of that amount.

If your injuries were caused by way of a criminal assault as would appear to be the case, you need to ensure that the incident is reported to the police (and that you cooperate with the Police in their investigations of the matter) and that you seek medical attention for any injuries sustained.

Our Solicitors can then assist you in pursuit of a No Win No Fee claim via the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority scheme for the victims of non-fault criminal injuries.

Given the new protocol for personal injury claims (for soft tissue injuries) arising from road traffic accidents which took effect as of the 1st June 2021, it would be prudent for you to gain a better understanding of the shoulder injury you have sustained. We say this as claimants wishing to pursue a No Win No Fee claim for soft tissue injuries after a car accident must now have injuries valued at £5000 to be able to recover legal costs (and therefore instruct a Solicitor on a No Win No Fee basis). Generally speaking, this means that claimants will need to have longer term injuries rather than the previous scenario where whiplash symptoms lasting for 4-6 weeks would suffice.

It would seem that you are likely to meet the new criteria given the ongoing injury problems you describe, but getting a formal diagnosis of the shoulder injury and an idea of recovery prognosis from a specialist would help you to establish and prove that the value criteria is met.

In terms of your former colleague being aware that you had claimed personal injury, this is unlikely to happen. The insurers have already admitted liability and resolved the vehicle situation. Therefore, should a personal injury claim be made in due course in which the injuries are consistent with the accident details on record, they will not question the matter or need to seek any statement from the drivers involved.

You have up to 3 years from the date of your accident within which you can pursue a claim. Our view is that as your injury symptoms remain present now, you are in a position to pursue a claim on a No Win No Fee basis.

Please contact us on 01225430285 or by using the start your claim page of our website. It is likely that our Solicitors will be able to act for you in pursuit of compensation for the physical injuries and psychological trauma caused to you in the accident you describe.

Was your accident scene attended by the Police? Did you present to a GP or Hospital with any pain or injury symptoms? Essentially, if we can demonstrate that you were at the scene of the collision and have had some form of medical attention (chiropractor notes would suffice) that will provide a good level of evidence to support your claim.

If you can identify the vehicle and establish that they were definitely there (camera footage would likely be needed to establish this – or an independent witness), you could pursue a claim against the vehicle driver.

It would appear that the passenger in your car will struggle to succeed with a personal injury claim given the lack of sufficient damage to your car. Although a collision of sorts has occurred, the insurers of the van in question will point to what is called ‘low velocity impact’ (LVI) in which they may not contest that an incident has occurred, but will contest that the force of the collision was consistent with causing a personal injury.

The diagnosis you’ve had is absolutely fine in terms of a claim for personal injury compensation.

Yes, we can help you to pursue a claim for whiplash compensation on a No Win No Fee basis.

We’ll need the 3rd party vehicle registration details along with the date and location of the accident.

Our Solicitors can help you to claim compensation in this incident.

It is very common that soft tissue injuries as a result of trauma – like a road traffic accident do not present symptoms immediately, but instead develop in the hours and days post accident. As such, our specialist Solicitors will have no problem including your back/neck and shoulder pain within a claim for personal injury compensation.

Don’t have any further direct dealings with the 3rd party insurers – you need specialist expert representation from one of our Solicitors. We can help you make a No Win No Fee claim and our specialist expert personal injury Solicitors will ensure that your legal rights are upheld and that your injuries and losses are properly accounted for, so that your claim is settled properly and for the appropriate value.

You don’t have to use your insurers to make a claim for personal injury compensation as you can select your own preferred specialist and independent personal injury expert to run your claim on the same No Win No Fee basis. Whilst you would expect us to say this, we do receive a lot of contact from people looking for help after their own insurers legal provider made a mess of their personal injury claim.

The fact that your symptoms developed in the 24 hours after the accident is common for such injuries. Due to the way muscle spasms develop and with the added impact of shock and adrenaline, the majority of people with soft tissue injuries caused in a road traffic accident will notice them develop in the 24-48 hours post accident.

We have specialist Solicitors who can help you claim compensation for the pain and discomfort of your injuries, recover any other associated costs and also recover any loss of income if you are unable to work. Please call us on 01225430285 or you can easily start your claim for compensation on our website if you prefer.

Yes, you certainly can make a claim and appear to have a valid and strong clam for compensation. As the 3rd party driver collided with the rear of your car, they are liable for any damage to the vehicle and for any injuries you have sustained.

As long as you have the vehicle registration for your car and that of the liable 3rd party, our specialist Solicitors can make a No Win No Fee claim for the physical injuries that you have sustained and any associated costs or losses you may incur. If you have evidence of damage to your car (photographs of the dents/scratches), that will also provide helpful evidence to support your claim.

Our Solicitors can work for you on a No Win No Fee basis to recover compensation for the physical injuries and pain caused to you and also recover any loss of income and other incurred costs caused by the negligent actions of the 3rd party driver.

Please call us on 01225430285 to get further help and start your claim. Alternatively, you can get things moving online via our ‘start a claim‘ service if you prefer.

You do have a right to claim compensation for the injuries you have sustained and for whiplash compensation. We can help you with claiming compensation.

As no other vehicle was involved, the only way you could avoid being held as the ‘liable’ party would be to prove that the authorities had allowed the road to be unduly hazardous when wet. You would have to demonstrate that that they were aware of the number (and severity) of road traffic accidents at the site in question and had failed to do anything about it.

If reports had been made of drainage issues and no action was taken, it may be possible to demonstrate that the liable party were the highways authority.

Any claim would be made against whichever parties negligence caused your injuries. You mention being at the home of your in-laws, but how were you injured? What were you doing and what happened? In order to be able to advise further as to whether a claim for personal injury compensation is viable, we need to know more about the actual accident and injuries. We could then advise as to whom the claim would be against.

If you have the details of the 3rd party that caused you to have to brake so hard that you sustained injury, we can pursue against them and their insurers. If you do not have those details, we could still help – if you reported the incident to the Police – by way of making a claim via the Motor Insurers Bureau scheme for the victims of untraced drivers as if the 3rd party fled the scene without stopping, it may be possible to pursue the claim on the same basis as if the injuries were caused in a hit and run incident.

Please call us on 01225430285 for further help with this.

You absolutely have a right to make a claim for personal injury compensation for the soft tissue injuries you describe. The common term to describe the injuries you have sustained is ‘whiplash’. Our specialist Solicitors are able to pursue such claims on a No Win No Fee basis.

To start your claim, we’ll need to take some initial basic information about you, the accident, the injuries and the details of the vehicles involved so that we can then present your claim to our Solicitors. If you have not yet seen your GP, we would recommend that you make an appointment so that your injuries can be noted – this is important should the symptoms persist and prove to be more severe than you may hope.

If the tree that fell on to your vehicle was blown down in the recent storm, you would not be able to make a claim for personal injury compensation. Whilst unfortunate, in such circumstances, the tree falling is not an act of negligence but simply due to a severe and unpredictable weather phenomenon.

In cases such as the one you describe, it is most likely that car 3 (as you describe) is the liable party in full and is responsible for the losses and potential injuries of both yourself and car 2.

If you have already attempted to pursue a claim against car 3’s insurers directly and been rebuffed, you can – if you are determined to represent yourself rather than instruct a specialist personal injury Solicitor to act for you – contact car 3 insurers and ask for their claims department and submit your own claim to them for the injuries you have sustained. Whilst you have the right to pursue your claim directly, you should consider whether you are able to represent yourself adequately or whether it may be prudent to make an instruction to a specialist personal injury Solicitor to act on your behalf to ensure that your interest and rights are upheld. Should you opt to instruct a Solicitor (such as those with whom we work), you would be able to do so on a No Win No Fee basis, thus not risking any financial implication should your claim fail.

An important item for consideration in the scenario you describe relates to the apparent low velocity impact (LVI) in this incident. In your case, establishing liability for the accident against car 3 should not be a problem. However, the 3rd party insurers are almost certain to argue that whilst the collision occurred, the speed of the collision and the amount of damage to your vehicle indicates that your injuries are not consistent with the mechanical forces of the collision. As such, they will likely reject that your injuries were caused by their driver. With this in mind, having a specialist Solicitor act for you, ensuring that appropriate medical evidence is obtained to demonstrate that you have sustained soft tissue injuries as a result of the collision may well be the most sensible course of action.

You are right in what you say regarding whiplash. For many people it is seen as a ‘joke’ and disregarded as being a made up injury. However, those of us who work with claimants pursuing claims for whiplash compensation (and for people like me who have suffered the injury personally), we understand just how debilitating the worst of the symptoms can be.

You have done the right thing in terms of reporting the details of the incident to the Police. However, as you point out, whilst you are clearly the ‘innocent’ party in this incident, without any corroborating evidence or witness information it is very easy for the negligent driver to deny any knowledge of the incident. With this in mind, it could make it difficult to succeed with a claim for compensation.

We would be happy to speak with you to obtain further details from you regarding the incident, the Police Reference number and the vehicles involved so that we could pass the details to our specialist whiplash injury compensation Solicitors. They would then be able to make initial enquiries with the alleged defendant and see if anything positive could be achieved for you. If you would like to take that further, please email me directly and we’ll obtain the information needed from you (ian@direct2compensation.co.uk).

The evidence that you mention from A&E would certainly support your claim with regards to demonstrating that your injuries are confirmed and diagnosed professionally.

The evidence you need to provide to start the claim is the identity of the offending driver who was liable for the accident. With this in mind, we would simply need the vehicle registration for both parties and your personal information to start your claim for compensation.

Thank you for your comment. Yes, if you were hit from behind in a road traffic collision, you would be entitled to claim compensation for any injury or loss caused by the negligence of the 3rd party driver who caused the accident.

If you would like to pursue your claim with us, please call us on 01225430285.

You can make a claim against whoever was responsible for the item that caused you to take evasive action. To pursue this, you’ll need to be able to identify the proposed defendant and have evidence to support your claim such as having made a police report or having reported the piece of metal to whichever company had responsibility for it. I assume it fell from a vehicle or building as you drove?

How do you counter measure the wild claims made by some Orthopeadic/Nuero experts, “that the accident aggravated pre existing degenerative changes of the cervical spine”. This is quite clearly an Insurance Company “get out” excuse that “joint single expert”doctors will re-inforce for a fee. No doctor can tell you what part of your cervical spine has been damaged, reason being an MRI cannot show microscopic damage to the Facet joints within the vertabrae. They are guessing, period!. Every single human being on this planet has degeneration of the cervical spine (neck). It is a fact of life. You had this disease at the time of the accident but caused no problems but now afterwards you are suffering and make no mistake the condition can become chronic lasting many many years.
I have been rear ended four times over 20 years so I am writing from experience. What I really dont understand is that my last accident trapped a nerve in my neck at C8-T1, (confirmed by MRI) but according to the Joint single expert it’s down to degeneration! These experts who make these ridiculous claims should be reported to the GMC!
although my Hospital Nuero Surgeons say otherwise. I rest my case.

The frustration you have regarding disagreement on the contents of a medical experts report in to an injury suffered in a non-fault accident and to what extent an expert may attribute symptoms to an accident or to degeneration is understandable.

The problem is that nobody can look in to the future or know what the future holds. Therefore, it is not possible to say with certainty that the symptoms of pain or discomfort that are noticed after an accident would not have developed naturally in years to come.

The vast majority of medical expert reports confirm that the injuries and symptoms that they have been asked to assess were fully caused by the accident that forms the basis of the claim for compensation and most claimants are happy with the outcome. However, for those claimants who are left disappointed with the contents of a medical report, their frustration (and that of their specialist Solicitor) is understandable.

Hi Ian
Thank you for your very informative response. Over the years I have dealt with “experts” whose very expensive reports would make fine comedy scripts with one joker even advising on vehicle crumple zones!! Very much against the rules of expert evidence. What the main problem with expert reports is that due to the mechanics and nature of neck injury most of the injury cannot be seen, so look at medical history of client, consider age, well yes, cervical spine degeneration, broad blanket covers all. The majority of these experts I have dealt with clearly do not understand the huge forces involved with rear end shunts. Many hundreds of people have been denied the proper level of compensation due to negligent medical reports that the lay man cannot reasonably challenge. I challenge my experts through CPR 35 .4 questions which most lay people are unaware of.
A fantastic and very informative site Ian, well done and keep your good work.

Thank you for your kind comments. We appreciate that the system is not perfect and that many of the cards are held by the well funded and powerful insurance lobby – which makes succeeding with a claim for personal injury compensation far from easy.

With this in mind, it is why we have tried to make our service and our website a strong and accurate resource for prospective claimants in order that people looking to pursue a claim for personal injury compensation can do so understanding their rights, knowing what they should expect and what they can do to give their claim the very best prospect of success.

The problem in challenging the conclusion about a pre-existing injury or condition is how do you do so? How can you argue with medical opinion?

For many people making a claim for personal injury compensation, an element of age related or degenerative conditions will be noted within a medical experts report. This is particularly common amongst those who are making claims for injuries relating to the spine, neck and joints. Of course, it is disappointing to receive such a report as it may appear that it will let a defendant insurer ‘off the hook’ a little in terms of the level of damages that they will have to finance in settlement of a claim.

In your case, it would seem that the medical expert is of the view that your symptoms will persist for 12 months but that the ongoing issues that you are having relate to pre-existing degenerative problems within the area of the injury. You should discuss with your Solicitor as to whether or not there is any realistic possibility of being able to challenge the opinion of the expert. Whilst you could seek a 2nd report from a different expert, this is a risky option. Firstly, you would likely have to pay the cost of the 2nd medical (as you wouldn’t be able to recover the cost of a 2nd medical whereas you can with the first one) and secondly, another expert may well reach the same conclusion as the first expert, in which case you would be out of pocket with no benefit.

Yes, you can certainly claim compensation in this matter and we would be happy to help you make your claim. Do you have records of the vehicles involved or the Uber in which you were travelling?

As the passenger in this car accident, you are able to make a claim for compensation for the injuries sustained. The fault for this accident would appear to be that of the driver of the car and as such, any claim you were to make would be against the insurance policy of the driver.

It would seem that you have some good evidence to support your claim in this matter. Given that, you should immediately make sure that your insurers are aware of this and make sure that they have copies of the evidence.

There is no harm in allowing us to further investigate your prospects of claiming compensation. As we work on a No Win No Fee basis, if we can’t take your claim further or if we do and it fails, you will not face liability for costs.

The main ‘problem’ I can see at this stage is the issue of you being the car at the rear. Whilst you have not directly caused the collision, as the car behind you would normally be expected to have been sufficiently distant to be able to stop should the cars ahead break or change direction. Clearly, you have attempted to avoid collision, but not been able to do so. The car that came to an emergency stop would have done so for a valid reason, so it may be hard to establish liability against that driver.

So that we can take this further, please make sure that you have the vehicle registration details of all parties involved and email them to us at justice@direct2compensation.co.uk along with a brief explanation of the incident and your contact details.

You need to pursue your own claim and seek a specialist (such as Direct2Compensation and the Solicitors we work with) to act for you on a No Win No Fee basis. This is not something that you need to discuss with your own vehicle insurance company as it is a separate matter and best kept so.

The issues you mention with regards to your ongoing claim with the CICA is not something that would stop you from being unable to make a claim for compensation for the worsening of your symptoms or any new injuries caused in the recent road traffic accident. Of course, you have done the right thing in immediately raising the issues of the pre-existing injuries as they do need to be disclosed to any Solicitor you instruct.

Please call us on 01225430285 or use the ‘start a claim’ page of our website to start the ball rolling with your claim for compensation. We have expertise in managing claims such as yours and our specialist Solicitors would ensure that you were appropriately compensated for the injuries sustained and that the right medical evidence was obtained to demonstrate the exacerbation of any pre-existing injuries.

Given that this matter was settled with the defendant driver admitting liability in full there is nothing further you can do. The defendant did not have to go to court on the basis that they admitted liability for the accident. As you and your family members have accepted a full and final settlement of £2,600 the matter will be deemed to be closed.