MOJ Whiplash Consultation - Part 1
Discussion
I had a crash once which was going 50/50.
I refuted this. I was third party at the time and asked Adrian Flux (I will never use these people ever again) even with their legal team to claim back 50% of my costs.
They were totally uninterested and stated I needed to use a third party company.
I phoned the third party insurance company and tried to deal direct but they wouldn't give me any info saying I needed to be an AMC.
I then lost the reg of the third party car and Adrian Flux wouldn't give it to me saying I needed to be an AMC.
No AMC wanted to take it on without a whiplash claim. Absolutely retarded.
On the flip side not sure if it's because Motor Trade insurance or not but I had a car come off a trailer and write off another car that was fortunately parked.
My insurance were great and fought Admiral all the way to letting me buy back the car I hit and fought off the courtesy car charges.
I paid a grand for a smashed up Peugeot, sold it for £250 and forgot about it. No increase on policy at all in fact it dropped the next year substantially.
I refuted this. I was third party at the time and asked Adrian Flux (I will never use these people ever again) even with their legal team to claim back 50% of my costs.
They were totally uninterested and stated I needed to use a third party company.
I phoned the third party insurance company and tried to deal direct but they wouldn't give me any info saying I needed to be an AMC.
I then lost the reg of the third party car and Adrian Flux wouldn't give it to me saying I needed to be an AMC.
No AMC wanted to take it on without a whiplash claim. Absolutely retarded.
On the flip side not sure if it's because Motor Trade insurance or not but I had a car come off a trailer and write off another car that was fortunately parked.
My insurance were great and fought Admiral all the way to letting me buy back the car I hit and fought off the courtesy car charges.
I paid a grand for a smashed up Peugeot, sold it for £250 and forgot about it. No increase on policy at all in fact it dropped the next year substantially.
Raygun said:
When I hear stories of people claiming for whiplash just to make money it f
ks me off big time. My mum and dad were at a roundabout in Bury St Edmunds when their car was hit at the back by someone coming too fast into the roundabout, the result was a wrote off car and my mum with a genuine case of whiplash, she never claimed like the money grabbers do but a few months after she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, she was a non smoker and I reckon to this day that shunt triggered off the cancer.
I'm terribly sorry to hear that but I can assure you that the lung cancer had nothing at all to do with the car accident. Cancers take quite a long time to develop and I can guarantee that it was already there when the shunt happened, it just hadn't become obvious yet. Non-smokers can get lung cancer, the difference between smokers and non-smokers being the chance of developing it. ks me off big time. My mum and dad were at a roundabout in Bury St Edmunds when their car was hit at the back by someone coming too fast into the roundabout, the result was a wrote off car and my mum with a genuine case of whiplash, she never claimed like the money grabbers do but a few months after she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, she was a non smoker and I reckon to this day that shunt triggered off the cancer.The point made by TwigtheWonderKid is also quite correct that visits to doctors for unrelated reasons often lead to diagnoses of cancers which were already there in the background. In the cases where the cancer and the event are related, it is often the case that the cancer caused the event, not the other way round. If we take the Bob Marley example above, he actually had a skin cancer. The skin cancer weakened the bone of his toe which is why the toe was broken in a situation where it normally wouldn't have been, but many people still attribute the cancer to the broken toe rather than realising that the cancer led to the broken toe.
Some cancers are more likely to affect bones and lung cancer is one of those. It can metastasize to bone and it can cause bizarre hormonal changes which generally weaken all the bones. If your father who was also in the car at the same time and didn't have whiplash, I would say that it is quite possible, indeed quite likely, that your mother's bones had already been weakened as a result of the lung cancer already being there, resulting in her developing whiplash when someone of comparable age in exactly the same situation either didn't or at least not to the same extent. I hope that can explain things more clearly.
With the rest, I'm totally with you; we should be allowed to tar and feather the buggers who falsely claim whiplash just for compensation when they've had an accident, and remove the genitalia of those who intentionally cause accidents to make a claim. The doctors are often in a no-win situation because the same people who make false claims of whiplash to get money also threaten doctors with making complaints to make the doctors' lives a nightmare. I have many colleagues who are seriously considering recording all of their consultations to protect themselves against malicious allegations.
DOI: Although I left the NHS to work in the pharmaceutical industry a few years ago, I spent the majority of my working life as a cardiothoracic (heart and lung) surgeon. Feel free to pm me if you want to ask questions.
PS for others. Bob Marley didn't die of brain cancer, it was just that the skin cancer had also spread to his brain (and lungs) and that's how the skin cancer killed him.
I'm a little lost with what you say about Doctors being in a no win situation here. Are you really suggesting people present at their doctors wanting a record of a stiff neck while openly saying it's bogus or arguing with the doctor who suggests there's nothing wrong and threatening them with a malicious complaint...rather than simply presenting with a stiff neck that is bogus? Or was it just an unrelated aside?
S11Steve said:
I see a few dozen claim forms a week for the fleet that I manage, and it never ceases to amaze me the BS that people put on their claim forms, and that "solicitors" are complicit in all of this.
The current favourite is "ongoing stress and anxiety whilst travelling in vehicles", and a load of legalese as to why the defendant is slightly more culpable than Hitler in the scheme of things.
I am a fleet driver and I have had three accidents over the last 5-6 years. In each case I have been stationary in traffic and been rear ended. The cumulative effect has left me quite nervous in traffic situations, especially when in the car with my family. I am currently undergoing a course of EMDR to help deal with it. The current favourite is "ongoing stress and anxiety whilst travelling in vehicles", and a load of legalese as to why the defendant is slightly more culpable than Hitler in the scheme of things.
The last year since the most recent accident has been an incredibly difficult and stressful time for me and my family (I am on a very short fuse when they are passengers). In fact it's been so bad that it has lead to some rows that have put a strain on my marriage. This of course is BS in your world view. I hope you never have to go through a similar situation, although you're probably "hard" enough to shrug it off.
PurpleMoonlight said:
Has the compo been good?
Actually if you take into consideration time off work for various appointments and physiotherapist costs (outside of those paid for by the insurance company) I'm financially worse off. With the new rule I would be significantly financially worse off.My anecdote was more to demonstrate that when someone says that an accident has caused them anxiety they aren't automatically liars.
That said I'm sure that many "Daily Mail" types probably think it's all a fabrication.
We got rear ended up a woman who had been tailgaiting us for miles and then backed off and rammed us at a roundabout.
We were spun up the road about 40yards and 180 degrees.
9k of damage to my friends corsa VXR.
I was fine day 1 but day 2 was awful and got worse, went to docs, given some pain meds, made me sick, had to get my mum to pick me up from work and take me back to my house and i slept for 2 days.
Then i started getting terrors when driving at night with headlights in my mitrors and people tailgaiting me.
It wasnt fake, it was horrid, it was 10 days before i could really drive and months before I didnt get chills when i saw cars coming up behind me.
I got 1800 quid after 9 months and the woman who hit us got off scot free!! Should have been done for dangerous driving. Thats the worst part.
Id rather have not had the injury and not had the 1800 quid.
No doubt insurers will be very quick to pass on these savings in personal injury payouts to the customer...
We were spun up the road about 40yards and 180 degrees.
9k of damage to my friends corsa VXR.
I was fine day 1 but day 2 was awful and got worse, went to docs, given some pain meds, made me sick, had to get my mum to pick me up from work and take me back to my house and i slept for 2 days.
Then i started getting terrors when driving at night with headlights in my mitrors and people tailgaiting me.
It wasnt fake, it was horrid, it was 10 days before i could really drive and months before I didnt get chills when i saw cars coming up behind me.
I got 1800 quid after 9 months and the woman who hit us got off scot free!! Should have been done for dangerous driving. Thats the worst part.
Id rather have not had the injury and not had the 1800 quid.
No doubt insurers will be very quick to pass on these savings in personal injury payouts to the customer...
robemcdonald said:
I am a fleet driver and I have had three accidents over the last 5-6 years. In each case I have been stationary in traffic and been rear ended. The cumulative effect has left me quite nervous in traffic situations, especially when in the car with my family. I am currently undergoing a course of EMDR to help deal with it.
The last year since the most recent accident has been an incredibly difficult and stressful time for me and my family (I am on a very short fuse when they are passengers). In fact it's been so bad that it has lead to some rows that have put a strain on my marriage. This of course is BS in your world view. I hope you never have to go through a similar situation, although you're probably "hard" enough to shrug it off.
Au contraire... I've undergone extensive counselling for PTSD related to something that happened to me 20 years ago, so I appreciate the consequences of a traumatic event. The last year since the most recent accident has been an incredibly difficult and stressful time for me and my family (I am on a very short fuse when they are passengers). In fact it's been so bad that it has lead to some rows that have put a strain on my marriage. This of course is BS in your world view. I hope you never have to go through a similar situation, although you're probably "hard" enough to shrug it off.
However, when I tie in some of the BS claim forms to the telematic data and accident repairs, I do wonder how people are able to get on with their life after suffering the unimaginable terror of losing a wing mirror at a combined impact speed of 8.2mph.
I really do feel for these precious little darlings...
pork911 said:
I'm a little lost with what you say about Doctors being in a no win situation here. Are you really suggesting people present at their doctors wanting a record of a stiff neck while openly saying it's bogus or arguing with the doctor who suggests there's nothing wrong and threatening them with a malicious complaint...rather than simply presenting with a stiff neck that is bogus? Or was it just an unrelated aside?
Bit of everything in there, really. It is an aside but it definitely is related to the mountain of whiplash claims this scheme is trying to control. A lot of people present with a stiff and sore neck due to "whiplash" when they have no actual pain or stiffness, who also "want it on their record," knowing full well that there's nothing a doctor can reasonably do to disprove that they have a sore neck. Of course they don't openly say that they're faking it, but they are and it's obvious to a trained eye when you start observing them walking into and out of the consultation room. The moment they're over the threshold, they seem to be stuck down with the worst muscular stiffness imaginable but you can neither write that in your medical notes nor save yourself from being savaged by a rottweiler of a barrister if & when you're in the witness box. There's no investigation or blood test you can to prove or disprove that they're lying; even MRI scans can be misleading but even if they were 100% sensitive and 100% specific, the NHS would grind to halt overnight if anyone who complained of a sore neck got an MRI. The claimants and the ambulance chasing litigation solicitors know this very well and use it to their full advantage.
The people who pull this often start becoming very aggressive if the doctor tries to suggest that they are absolutely fine +/- may be exaggerating a bit/a lot. It's difficult not to be intimidated when you're a 5'2" female GP (that defines 8 out of the 10 partners in my wife's practice including my wife herself and is not unusual) and an agressive looking 6' scumbag, or even another 5'2" female but one who is an aggressive, sweary, scummy psycho, is shouting and swearing in your consultation room threatening you with physical violence and/or complaints to GMC/CQC/BMA and everyone under the sun. Nobody, including the police, gives a flying f
k when NHS staff are threatened with violence and it's a very difficult and prolonged process to be able to strike someone off your list, so either of those are often not real options. If you do call the police, you may be lucky and be given a crime reference number on the phone which can allow you to strike them off your list but not often. Don't expect anyone to attend. Even if you do kick them off, the CCG might force you to take them back anyway. The only thing you can do to protect yourself is to record what the patient says they have in a neutral way ("the patient described that they were in a car accident...," "the patient is complaining of pain and stiffness...," "on examination, lateral flexion is limited to 10 degrees...,") without recording your opinion that the reason for the limitation of movement is voluntary muscular activity. Despite me being a 6' bloke, I have also been threatened many times by very aggressive and intimidatory oxygen thieves while doing my basic surgical training, and even more frequently by shouty people with complaints. Further bear in mind that as a GP, these people are on your list and you, or at the very least your practice, will be seeing these people on a regular basis and they will make your life hell for a long time to come. Imagine the worst of the neighbour dispute threads then double the level of a
holery and you're just about getting how these people will make your working life for next few months or years. If you given in to the bullying, and threats of violence or complaints, people whinge that doctors are colluding with fraudsters; if you don't give in, you put your personal safety, your property and your career at risk. Even though I was relatively isolated from some of this in a tertiary care only specialty, this type of behaviour certainly added to the 100 other reasons why I left the NHS.
S11Steve said:
robemcdonald said:
I am a fleet driver and I have had three accidents over the last 5-6 years. In each case I have been stationary in traffic and been rear ended. The cumulative effect has left me quite nervous in traffic situations, especially when in the car with my family. I am currently undergoing a course of EMDR to help deal with it.
The last year since the most recent accident has been an incredibly difficult and stressful time for me and my family (I am on a very short fuse when they are passengers). In fact it's been so bad that it has lead to some rows that have put a strain on my marriage. This of course is BS in your world view. I hope you never have to go through a similar situation, although you're probably "hard" enough to shrug it off.
Au contraire... I've undergone extensive counselling for PTSD related to something that happened to me 20 years ago, so I appreciate the consequences of a traumatic event. The last year since the most recent accident has been an incredibly difficult and stressful time for me and my family (I am on a very short fuse when they are passengers). In fact it's been so bad that it has lead to some rows that have put a strain on my marriage. This of course is BS in your world view. I hope you never have to go through a similar situation, although you're probably "hard" enough to shrug it off.
However, when I tie in some of the BS claim forms to the telematic data and accident repairs, I do wonder how people are able to get on with their life after suffering the unimaginable terror of losing a wing mirror at a combined impact speed of 8.2mph.
I really do feel for these precious little darlings...
Different people are stronger or weaker than others in different ways. So what may not be a big deal for you may well be for someone else. That doesn't make them in anyway inferior to you just different.
robemcdonald said:
You started off well. I usually find shared experience leads to empathy. Apparently not in your case. You haven't said what caused your PTSD and I assume its something quite horrific you can use a sucker punch to close out the discussion. Whatever it is I am sure that someone else has gone through worse. How would you feel if that person described you as a "precious little darling" for your experience.
Different people are stronger or weaker than others in different ways. So what may not be a big deal for you may well be for someone else. That doesn't make them in anyway inferior to you just different.
Attempted murder, 28 inches of facial fractures, and a permanent disability since you ask. And people can call me what they like, it really doesn't bother me, or affect my morals.Different people are stronger or weaker than others in different ways. So what may not be a big deal for you may well be for someone else. That doesn't make them in anyway inferior to you just different.
But PTSD after another car clips your wing mirror whilst negotiating a busy car park? Really? What sort of precious little darling needs counselling after that? Genuine case I'm dealing with at the moment, and just one of many with similar car park speed collisions that I'm involved in one way or another, and so many of them coming through with the "stress and anxiety" remarks.
Yep, there is one where one of our guys was in a Citroen C1 and was T-boned by a 26t Tipper grab truck, he's a mess, and deserves everything he is awarded, but Kourtney, Kyle, Kier, Kompo and Sayshun who were all sat in the back of mums Picasso when the bumper was scratched by a car reversing into a supermarket bay, do not need a holiday to recover.
S11Steve said:
robemcdonald said:
You started off well. I usually find shared experience leads to empathy. Apparently not in your case. You haven't said what caused your PTSD and I assume its something quite horrific you can use a sucker punch to close out the discussion. Whatever it is I am sure that someone else has gone through worse. How would you feel if that person described you as a "precious little darling" for your experience.
Different people are stronger or weaker than others in different ways. So what may not be a big deal for you may well be for someone else. That doesn't make them in anyway inferior to you just different.
Attempted murder, 28 inches of facial fractures, and a permanent disability since you ask. And people can call me what they like, it really doesn't bother me, or affect my morals.Different people are stronger or weaker than others in different ways. So what may not be a big deal for you may well be for someone else. That doesn't make them in anyway inferior to you just different.
But PTSD after another car clips your wing mirror whilst negotiating a busy car park? Really? What sort of precious little darling needs counselling after that? Genuine case I'm dealing with at the moment, and just one of many with similar car park speed collisions that I'm involved in one way or another, and so many of them coming through with the "stress and anxiety" remarks.
Yep, there is one where one of our guys was in a Citroen C1 and was T-boned by a 26t Tipper grab truck, he's a mess, and deserves everything he is awarded, but Kourtney, Kyle, Kier, Kompo and Sayshun who were all sat in the back of mums Picasso when the bumper was scratched by a car reversing into a supermarket bay, do not need a holiday to recover.
robemcdonald said:
There are always going to people that try to abuse the system for their own financial gain.
The whole industry is corrupt though - doctors, solicitors, car hire companies, bodyshops, claims management companies, and even the insurers themselves to a degree for perpetuating the system.I don't know what the answer is though, but anything that shakes up the industry can only be a step in the right direction.
S11Steve said:
The whole industry is corrupt though - doctors, solicitors, car hire companies, bodyshops, claims management companies, and even the insurers themselves to a degree for perpetuating the system.
As I explained above, doctors are not corrupt. In the whole saga of fraudulent insurance claims, the only people in your list who do NOT, I repeat, do NOT, have any financial incentive are the doctors. Please don't tar everyone with the same brush.QuickQuack said:
As I explained above, doctors are not corrupt. In the whole saga of fraudulent insurance claims, the only people in your list who do NOT, I repeat, do NOT, have any financial incentive are the doctors. Please don't tar everyone with the same brush.
I would disagree. My wife was injured in an accident and that required medical attention. All she wanted was the costs covered, but once the wheels were in motion my god do they spin fast. The medical expert was a GP, his line of questioning was leading to say the least and for his efforts 30mins ISTR that he got around £400. The questions were right in line with what our neighbour, a fraud investigator for NFU said would happen. He wanted to pass her on to another specialist who he knew and that was the impression he gace that the money they were paid in fees are the only thing.
They do not get any extra if the claim goes up, but if they give the legal guy's what they want to hear, they will get extra work.
Every driver in London when they were rear ended would always claim, average then was £3k for saying they had a stiff neck without too much hassle.
The genuine ones are tarred with a very dirty brush as most people will know someone whose first thought in an accident is how much will I get. Some caught on camera getting out rubbing their necks in a theatrical manner is laughable.
S11Steve said:
The whole industry is corrupt though - doctors, solicitors, car hire companies, bodyshops, claims management companies, and even the insurers themselves to a degree for perpetuating the system.
I don't know what the answer is though, but anything that shakes up the industry can only be a step in the right direction.
I'm not quite sure what the end game is, but at the moment there seems to be movement to demonising various groups. Be it immigrants, benefits claimants, people with disabilities etc.. we are fed the line that all these groups are in some way stealing from us, through our taxes or in this case our insurance premiums. We then buy into rhetoric like "the whole industry is corrupt" and actually applaud as our own rights are taken away from us. The weird thing is people refuse to see seem to be in the minority, so perhaps I'm wrong.I don't know what the answer is though, but anything that shakes up the industry can only be a step in the right direction.
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