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Simon Marsh's guest blog: 21 November 2013 - The problem with tackling whiplash
Date: 21 November 2013
I went to Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi recently and had a go on Rosso, the world's fastest roller coaster.
It accelerates from standstill to 150mph in 4.9 seconds. Along with several hundred other people that day I was launched 52m into the air and felt the equivalent of nearly five times the force of gravity.
When I got to the end, did I or any of the people on it step off and complain about whiplash? Of course we didn't.
But our necks probably had more severe forces working on them than some crashes where people have claimed for life-inhibiting injuries.
Whiplash is tissue damage, very difficult to either prove or disprove. Ally that to ambulance chasing lawyers and a mentality among some that it's OK to try it on with an insurance company, and the UK has become the whiplash capital of Europe.
That's why I welcome the Ministry of Justice's decision to appoint independent medical panels to assess whiplash claims. But I don't think it's going to work.
The good thing is that it will deter opportunists who think nothing of claiming because 'that's what insurance is for'. What it won't do is stop criminal gangs.
Unlike breaking a limb, there are no physical symptoms of whiplash that can't be faked.
And for the less scrupulous in our society, being offered a share of a hefty insurance payout will bring out acting skills Kenneth Branagh would be proud of. Even a medical panel will struggle to get to the truth.
On top of that, it doesn't address the problem of the number of people involved in the accident. I've seen crashes where one person is in the car that's crashed into yet by the time the claim makes it to the insurer there were four in the car, all claiming to have stiff necks.
If that's a scam between two colluding cars you could have eight or 10 people claiming for whiplash. If you could prove they've got bad necks, there's no way of confirming they got them in that accident.
Scenarios like this force insurers into a difficult commercial decision. Do they settle a claim and move on? Or do they go through the expense of taking it to court in a bid to prove someone is lying?
If they do and they win, the likelihood of getting the costs back is certainly not guaranteed and often a judge will only award 75% costs.
My concern is the medical panel will still be powerless to stop the guilty making money from bogus claims. And let's not forget, the overarching principle behind insurance is to protect the innocent and to settle genuine claims.
