Personal injury claims on the up

The number of road accidents and crash casualties in the UK has gone down.

The number of fatalities as a result of road accidents fell by 14% from 2,946 in 2007 to 2,538 in 2008.

In 2008 there were 28,572 people killed or seriously injured in accidents reported to the police. This is a 7% drop from 2007.

However, despite numbers decreasing, personal injury claims have soared according to newly released figures.

Recent data from the Association of British Insurers shows that the number of injury claims has increased from £8.8 billion in 2006 to £9.6 billion in 2009.

Director of AA Insurance Simon Douglas said: "The falling accident rate is good news, especially as this continues a long-term downward trend. But I'm not really surprised to see it.

"This year has seen fuel prices rise along with other demands on family budgets as well as rising levels of redundancy, all of which discourages car use: indeed, the Department for Transport notes that traffic volumes fell by 2 per cent over the year. But the number of personal injury claims is going up."

He points to figures published by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) which says there is an 'unnecessary' and 'steady' increase in personal injury claims, which topped 9.6 billion last year, up from 8.8 billion in 2006.

40% of the value of these claims is absorbed by legal expenses. Last year alone, there were 1,200 whiplash injury claims per day, amounting to 1.9 billion in personal injury payouts.

"This suggests that those involved in accidents are much more inclined to make personal injury claims, even for non-serious injuries such as minor whiplash cured by painkillers over a couple of days, which in the past, people would have just not bothered to claim for," Douglas added.

Whiplash UK

Rear-end accidents are by far the most common type of crash on British roads, with 420,000 such bumps a year accounting for one in four of all road accidents.

While the overall amount of UK drivers being involved in collisions has been falling steadily for several years, rear end shunts have shunted up.

This is because whiplash injury from a road accident is also the most faked personal injury when it comes to false injury claims.

A recent investigation by GPs across the UK, has shown that there has been a 24% increase in people fraudulently claiming they had been injured in a car accident since the recession began.

A massive 98% of all the GPs surveyed said they had seen a patient whom they believed was exaggerating an injury caused by a car accident so they would be compensated for it.

However, despite the sudden rise, whiplash personal injury fraud has been a slow-burning issue for nearly 10 years, according to 65% of the survey participants.

Out of all the 'fake' claims logged, whiplash was highlighted as a favourite for fraudsters, mainly because it is very difficult to prove, with the UK reporting more injuries of this kind than other European countries.

Whiplash injury is therefore currently costing insurers £1.9billion a year and accounts for 75% of all bodily injury claims.