Fraudulent Whiplash Claims

Whiplash is a chronic neck injury which is caused by a sudden jerk to the neck. Recently some fraudulent claims have been made regarding this. The main motivation for this is to earn easy money by faking the pain and harassing the accused and insurance companies. This is extremely unlawful and should be checked, strongly objected to and stopped.

Whiplash is not only an injury of the body but also affects the mind as the patient is not able to perform his/her daily routine smoothly. It is caused generally when people meet with road traffic accidents. Law has allowed the sufferer to claim damages for the problem to be cured and for not being able to perform the routine work which they normally undertook. Further, insurance companies pay for the complete medical treatment and other expenses if the person is not able to perform certain activities. Some people take undue advantage of the law and fake their problems to be chronic, in order to earn easy money.

Fraudulent whiplash claims have been heavy on the insurance companies costing roughly £125m every year. For this particular reason, correct diagnosis should be carried out to help insurance companies win cases against these frauds. With proper check up and diagnosis it can be discovered if the problem is genuine or fake.

Some measures have been taken to reduce fraudulent claims which have resulted in some delay for the genuine claimant. There are cases where gangs of criminals have been caught red handed for staging car crashes and making fraudulent claims. Some steps have been taken to help the genuine claimants where research is carried out to detect fake whiplash symptoms. There have been several instances where teams of doctors were set up to observe people suffering from whiplash, proving mainly that exaggerated symptoms are the way to make fraudulent claims. Some research has proven that problems such as inflammation, range of motion, muscle pull and the fixation of vertebral joints cannot be faked.

However, some concerns have risen for the costs incurred to identify the fraud which are very high and which delay the actual and genuine claims also. Strong methods should be adopted to prevent inconvenience caused to genuine claimants and punish the fraudulent ones.

Fraudulent claims are unethical and unlawful and will not be tolerated by society.