• UK government to tackle whiplash insurance claims
    3 replies, posted
[B]The cost of car insurance could be cut if the government restricted the huge number of subjective whiplash injury claims, a committee of MPs says.[/B] The Transport Select Committee says claimants should provide much more proof that they have suffered a whiplash injury. The MPs also want insurers to be banned from selling any customer information. [B]The government intends to ban them from receiving referral fees for this data, but only for personal injury claims.[/B] Louise Ellman, chair of the Transport Committee, said: "[B]Insurers, solicitors and claims management companies have themselves driven up the cost of motor premiums by encouraging people caught up in road accidents they did not cause to claim for personal injury, car hire, and other legal costs.[/B]" The committee pointed out that there has been a [B]70% rise in motor insurance injury claims in the past six years, despite a 23% drop in the number of casualties actually caused by road accidents[/B]. Louise Ellman said that [B][B]whiplash, in turn, accounted for 70% of all personal injury claims - amounting to roughly 554,000 whiplash claims in 2010-11[/B][/B]. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) agreed that the payment of referral fees should be banned altogether, but to all organisations and not just to insurers. "[B]It is absolutely critical that Britain's whiplash epidemic is tackled once and for all and the select committee's acknowledgment that the bar to receiving compensation for whiplash is too low is a step in the right direction[/B]," said Nick Starling of the ABI. But he explained that currently it was very hard for insurers to resist claims for whiplash injuries. "[B]There is one whiplash claim every minute of every day in this country - the problem is that if someone presents themselves with a medical certificate saying they have got whiplash, the insurance company would have to prove that they don't have whiplash, and that's an extremely difficult thing to do.[/B]" The renewed emphasis by the Parliamentary transport committee on dealing with spurious whiplash claims was welcomed by the motoring organisation the AA. "A claims culture has developed to the extent that [B]it has become accepted that if another vehicle hits your car, you should make an injury claim[/B]," said Simon Douglas of AA Insurance. "That's regardless of how serious the injury is, or even if no injury has actually been suffered," he added. The AA acknowledged that the steep rise in premiums recorded in the past few years had levelled off in the past nine months. [URL]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16510793[/URL] For those who don't know, car insurance in the UK is a dodgy business. It's very expensive and required by law. If someone goes into the back of you then it's automatically their fault regardless of the circumstances, and your insurance company knows this. So when you claim for the damage to your car, they will persuade you to claim for personal injuries as this means they can sell your details to a personal claims company, and it's also a guaranteed win if it goes to court. So most people claim for whiplash and depression as they are very hard to prove, and whiplash alone will get you around £700 per person, and this also gives the insurance company an excuse to put the premiums up
About fucking time, this is a post of me asking for advice on a motoring forum of a recent fake claim attempt on my girlfriend's mother: [quote] Posting on behalf of the girlfriend's mother here, who is currently in Spain due to family affairs. She unfortunately backed into another car at an Asda car park in May last year. She was reversing out of her space when she collided at no more than walking pace with an oncoming car, the damage was minimal but the female driver of the other car went off the rails at my OHs mum. Eventually details were swapped, pictures taken etc and the who thing was sorted through the insurance. The damage to each car was a barely visible scratch. Fast forward to today and a court summons lands on the doorstep requesting my girlfriend's mum attend court to defend herself after the female driver claimed damages to her neck, back and shoulder stating her work, home and even sex life has been affected as a result of the 'crash'. The document starts by saying she was reversed into by my OHs mother, a few pages later it goes on to say the vehicle was struck at 15mph... In a car park... in reverse! Causing her to be jolted forwards. She had taken 1 day off work and returned to full duties the next day but goes on to say she cannot carry out daily tasks such as housework, walking the dog or even keep up a sex life due to the injuries caused. The date of the crash was in May, the examination in August, a long time to leave it if it was that bad. It's a load of complete bks and I can't believe it's even made it to court it's that far-fetched. The document says she wishes to claim no less than £1000 and no more than £10,000. She's also successfully won £10,000 around 10 years ago due to a similar claim. We've faxed the court docs to her insurance who will decide the next step tomorrow but what is the likelihood of this claim actually coming to anything? Best course of action? Thanks in advance. [/quote] The claim is obvious bullshit from page 1, anyone with sense could tell but it's still made it to the point where my GFs mum has been requested to attend court. Apparently me writing a letter to this fucking parasite would only make things worse but I have her to thank for my sky-high insurance cost.
[QUOTE=sam.clarke;34175075]About fucking time, this is a post of me asking for advice on a motoring forum of a recent fake claim attempt on my girlfriend's mother: The claim is obvious bullshit from page 1, anyone with sense could tell but it's still made it to the point where my GFs mum has been requested to attend court. Apparently me writing a letter to this fucking parasite would only make things worse but I have her to thank for my sky-high insurance cost.[/QUOTE] I was on another forum and someone got a letter from the other person's solicitor 6 months later saying she was demanding £100,000. He just ignored it and heard nothing back
This wasn't the solicitors, this was a court summons so we didn't have much choice to react. Sent the docs over to the insurance company who are now dealing with it, they think seem to think she'll actually be awarded something is there's not a lot of evidence to deny what she's saying... Despite the lack of evidence to support it either, the system is fucked. Our only hope is that she's made an error in the way she's gone about it, I don't know the proper process but apparently these things should be dealt with through the insurance rather than claiming directly against a driver, or something along those lines but hopefully it will nullify the claim. Either way I think courts should tighten up the conditions on which they pay out and anyone found to be faking a claim should pay all court costs and charged with attempt to defraud. Ireland put a similar system in place and the number of claims fell dramatically, insurance cost is now down about 40% per policy compared to 2 years ago.
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