Whiplash is currently more than just a pain in the neck to injured motorists, but also a pain in the wallet for all drivers when it comes to car insurance.
Because whiplash, alongside other factors such as the rising price of fuel, is making the cost of motoring soar by ramping up insurance premiums by a considerable degree.
So blatant has the abuse of whiplash claims become, that the Commons Transport Committee has gone to war against the myriad of fraudulent claims taking place these days.
MPs have called on insurance companies – along with less scrupulous solicitors, and “victims” of shunts which are nothing more than a minor nudge of the bumper – to abandon their “sharp practices” in pushing through accident claims.
Something has to be done about the vastly increasing cost of car insurance, and the many uncontested claims for whiplash perpetrated by professionals such as solicitors and doctors (the ones who are completely lacking in the ethics department, not the above board lawyers out there, of course).
Louise Ellman, Transport Committee Chair, commented: “Although we strongly support access to justice, drivers should not be railroaded by cold callers into launching legal action. The insurance industry must abandon sharp practices that push up premiums such as passing drivers’ personal data to other parties or taking secretive referral fees from solicitors, garages and car hire firms.”
Basically, the insurers are making money on such referral or other fees, and then shaking their heads woefully as they announce premiums have to be upped because of high levels of injury claims.
A sizeable proportion of these dodgy claims are for whiplash, mainly because the diagnosis of the injury is so subjective, it’s difficult and potentially costly for insurance firms to dispute.
Ellman said that the threshold for receiving whiplash injury compensation amounts should be upped, so the number of claims falls “significantly”.
She added: “The Government should bring forward primary legislation to require objective evidence – both of a whiplash injury and of it having a significant effect on the claimant’s life – before compensation is paid.”
While the government has recently made the decision to outlaw referral fees, they are only applying this rule to personal injury cases.
However, the Transport Committee would like to see a more sweeping ban of referral fees paid to insurers in all cases, bringing forward a greater level of transparency when it comes to seeing how these firms turn a profit.