It happens all the time: long, tiresome travel, a moment of distraction or a sudden meeting with a road-hog - and suddenly you end up in a crash. Whiplash injury is very often, maybe 80% of the time, the result of car accidents.

It’s an injury caused when the neck suddenly jerks backwards and forward or vice versa during a collision. A small percentage of whiplash injuries can cause traumas lasting many several years with many chronic problems. Each year British insurers deal with approximately 250,000 claims for this kind of injury! That’s a quarter of a million claims.

Recognise The Symptoms!

There are no two identical accidents and the symptoms of a whiplash injury may vary depending on e.g. vehicles’ speed, kind of collision (whether it’s front, rear or side), etc. Saying all that, there are some symptoms, which may often vary on a day-to-day basis. Victims can suffer from headaches, dizziness and nausea together with vomiting. Shoulders and arms become stiff or numb or one can feel neck and back pains or ‘pins and needles’ type of feeling. Blurred vision and ringing in the ears may also occur.

The Whiplash Injury Claim

As you will see, whiplash injury may result in long months of health problems and discomfort. Wearing a collar support, living on pain and anti-inflammatory medications - is not an easy time for anyone. Not mentioning how it can affect your daily job making it difficult or even impossible to perform the simplest task. Don’t you think that you deserve some solid compensation for all your health problems and frustration?

You deserve to make a whiplash injury claim in the fastest, easiest and least stressful way possible. It’s hard to deal with insurance companies when you’re injured and simply tired with the present situation.

So How Would You Handle It?

The answer is very simple: make use of a good accident compensation solicitor. They not only become your legal advisor - their job is to take care of all the process of claiming your accident compensation.

First, they grant you professional medical examination of your injury. Then handle all the procedures - pays the bills and fees, represent you in court, etc. You don’t have to worry about anything - it’s the solicitor’s duty to make your claim successful and to win the compensation for you in the most comfortable manner.

Companies hassling injured people and offering their services in brazen and insolent ways belong in the past. Nowadays, the methods of an injury claim is customised to make the process of claiming compensation stress-free. In cases of painful and lingering health problems, like whiplash traumas, making it as easy as possible, is just priceless.

Priceless? But Really, What Is The Price Of It?

Probably the most important aspect for you is, the services of an accident solicitor doesn’t cost you anything at all. If you successfully claim your injury compensation, you get 100% of it - no tricks.

All the bills and payments are paid by the party who lose the case. On the other hand, if you lose, you don’t pay for anything either - the solicitor makes all the payments.

Why should you pay for something that wasn’t your fault? It’s logical, isn’t it? So there is no risk involved in cooperating with an accident solicitor.

Whiplash injury itself is painful enough. Why would you add the pain of handling all the compensation claim by yourself, if you can make use of a quality solicitor?

The claims culture arrived and it was chaos. Door canvassers and telesales, knocking and ringing constantly for an injury claim. Have you had an injury? Have you had an accident in the last 3 years? It went ballistic, new companies evolving and new tricks came into place that would work against you.

The 9 Pros and Cons…

The Salespeople

Avoid these people who stop you in the streets, shopping center or at the hospitals! They don’t give a damn about you and surely don’t give a toss what the outcome is, of your injury claim. They work on a commission basis.

The Agreement

Did you ever understand what was said before you signed the agreement? I guess not. ‘Don’t worry it doesn’t mean anything, the company will contact you and sort it out’. Did they ever? Today there is so much jargon, i.e. crap, out there that many people just ignore a claim for compensation even if they have an injury.

The Bank

In the beginning it was always a helping hand with your claim, until it was settled, with insurance and loan deductions. Policies were taken out in the thousands which back fired. And guess who provides the financially funded policies? The BANKS!

The Loan

A loan agreement to fund a claim is unnecessary, but the salespeople claim ‘otherwise it’s not possible to be compensated and you’ll have to fork out a couple of hundred upfront to get started’. However, the deduction is phenomenal as the interest accumulates over the period of the claim. It could last up to 2 years and it gets deducted from your compensation.

The BIG & small Company

It didn’t help the victims as it was deducted from their compensation, but surely helped the BIG companies, who have now declared bankruptcy with millions ’scoped’ from their victims. But today you have smaller companies doing a similar trick, we’ll do this and we’ll do that… with their technical wording.

You’ll get confused just like food, this many calories, protein and fat. There is so much advertisement going around that you just think forget it, stick to what we normally do. NOTHING!

The Law

Compensation is an entitlement by law, for release of funds to the injured for being involved in an accident or being injured to some form. Accidents do occur, that’s life as nobody’s perfect. But with the media filling our heads with different slogans, headlines and examples, we get more confused even when it all means the same thing.

The Media

On TV, there’s new advertisers showing victims of accidents and how they have had an accident. But what they don’t realise is, each accident is unique, so why portray victims as happy as they could ever be with their payouts. Imagine you doing that? It’s a marketing stunt. But unfortunately many do fall for it.

The Solicitor

Specialist solicitors in claims should only handle your case, not a solicitor with a commercial background. So you need a solicitor with experience in the appropriate field to handle an injury or accident claim.

The Internet

Browse from one site to another is not going to help. You’ll be there all night, all week, all month or all year and still never make a claim for compensation. Their technical jargon, all mean something similar. We’ll do this and we’ll do that. Find something simple that will help.

Now that you are geared with such knowledge, do yourself a favour?

When an injury occurs to the spinal cord is occurs, the cord is not typically cut but the thin fibrous extensions of nerve cells surrounded by the vertebrae are crushed and damaged. Pathways of the nerve cells, called axons, in the cord are disrupted once an injury to the cord occurs and a person loses sensation and control over critical body functions.

Quadriplegia (also called Tetraplegia) is a person with a spinal cord injury near the top of the spine (between C1 to T1). It refers to the loss of sensation and mobility in both the upper and lower body. Spastic quadriplegia arises when all four limbs are affected with increased tone, decreased movements and brisk reflexes. It often is associated with mental retardation, visual problems and hearing impairment. Either this is the result of illness or intentional wrong, or negligent act by some other liable person that inflicted the spinal cord injury.

You can stop feeling sorry for sufferers you know and start helping them out in taking legal action for their condition. Persons who suffered spinal cord injury, particularly quadriplegia should get legal evaluation immediately after the accident. Legal consultation from attorneys is critical because victims need to find out the help that they are entitled to. Even accidents that result to quadriplegia that appears to be no one’s fault could still result in a recovery since the injuries are so severe. Damage claims will often exceed the amount of available insurance coverage.

Negligent acts that result to quadriplegia have the right to seek legal assistance to help defray medical bills, compensate for pain and suffering and provide for future lost income. You can assist them into finding an experienced personal injury lawyer practicing spinal cord injury lawsuits. Quadriplegia victims need intelligent and investigative attorneys who will find all coverage are able to devise theories to involve other parties potentially at fault for the injury.

In many of these cases, insurance companies and negligent parties can provide substantial compensation to the victims of these injuries. On the other hand, if the available insurance coverage is adequate enough, say like a million dollar policy is involved the company will have reason to fight the claims. This they will do to avoid paying large sums to the injured person and in this instance, victim’s attorney need to be an experienced trial lawyer, too.

Usually, wrongful death cases are hard to prove. They often take several years before they’re finally settled, and require expert and credible evidences and testimonies to establish the truth. The claimants are the ones who are responsible to prove the claim. Wrongful death attorneys only agree to handle a wrongful death case it they think it has a merit and find it to end up successfully. In most cases, the settlements range to millions of dollars.

In most cases, wrongful death claims are being filed against medical practitioners such as a doctor or an entire department of a hospital. They can also be made against the manufacturers of a defective product such as a motorcycle, automobile, mechanical or electrical device, and many others. In such instances, the case can also be addressed to the manufacturers of the parts of the product, wholesalers and even designers. In addition, wrongful death can also be job-related like in the case where safety precautions were not followed.

In the aforementioned grounds for a wrongful death claim, it is very important to present concrete evidences and comprehensive testimonies. Sometimes, defendants might offer the claimants huge amounts in out-of-court settlements to avoid damage to their reputation in the industry where they belong. If the claimants agree with this set-up, there is a less chance that a guilty verdict will be served against the defendant. However, this is not always the case because the facts of the case will already become public records.

You can get accident compensation if you are involved in a road accident as a driver, passenger, cyclist, or pedestrian. The other party’s insurance company makes the payment, in hit and run cases and in others where there is no insurance cover.

Employers have a legal obligation to protect workers against accidents at the workplace. Employers also get insurance cover against accidents in the workplace. Your employer can be liable for claims in case a fellow employee causes an accident that leads to injuries. Employers also follow strict rules and regulations to avoid accidents at work.

If you are injured at work, enter a report immediately in the Accident Report Book. The report should be fair and accurate, and should bear your signature. You should report injuries to the Health and Safety Executive and contact a lawyer immediately to investigate the accident.

You could also get injured in accidents while performing leisure activities. If you can prove that the accident was caused due to negligence by someone else or due to the use of faulty equipment, then you can make a claim. However, you can make no claims if you injure yourself as a result of your own actions. You can even make a claim if you get injured while living abroad.

Lawyers involved in the accident compensation claims need to belong to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) or the Law Society Personal Injury Panel. They should be experts in personal injury law and should be able to describe events in simple language.

You can make a claim if someone else has been at fault and can pay a sum in damages. You need to be 18 years and above to make such a claim. The accident should have occurred within the last three years. You can also make a claim if you have been injured and have had to suffer a loss of earnings temporarily. However, if you have suffered an injury due to your own actions, you may not receive compensation.

People seeking such compensation claims have been described as “money grabbers” from a kerb tripping generation, personally I beg to differ, although it is true that there have been (and possibly will be more) false compensation claims from people wishing to make a fast buck, the majority of cases are from genuine victims of personal injury accidents which could have been avoided.

Personal Injury Compensation Claims are often made against organizations or individuals who have been the cause of accidents that should not have happened; with a little more due care and attention the whole incident could have been avoided.