Lawford Kidd's Blog

New evidence about whiplash claims has been launched in Parliament. Based on independent research, The Whiplash Report 2012 dispels common myths about whiplash claims with the aim of clearing the way for sensible debate about the issue.

“The people who suffer these injuries are genuine,” APIL president Karl Tonks told MPs and peers at a House of Commons reception. “Honest claimants are not the problem – the problem is fraud, and fraud must be tackled by all sides working together if we are going to eliminate it.”

Among the research findings is the fact that 80% of whiplash sufferers either report their symptoms accurately or underplay them, and 90% of people seek a medical diagnosis.

A recent report commissioned by insurer RSA has found that road crashes caused by poor driver vision result in an estimated 2,900 casualties and cost £33 million per year.

Brake and RSA are calling for the numberplate test to be replaced with a requirement for drivers to have a proper vision test with a qualified professional at the start of their driving career, and mandatory re-testing every ten years thereafter linked to driving licence photocard renewal. Drivers should also be encouraged to voluntarily have their eyes tested every two years in line with NHS recommendations.

Julie Townsend, deputy chief executive, Brake, the road safety charity, said:

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has recently published provisional statistics on workplace ill-health and injury in Scotland in 2011/12.

The figures show that:

• There were 9,551 reported injuries to employees in 2011/12 compared to 10,216 in 2010/11, a fall of 7%.
• 64,000 people said they were suffering from an illness caused or made worse by their work, down from 77,000 in 2010/11.
• 20 workers were fatally injured - up from 14 the previous year. The average for the past five years was 23 worker deaths per year.

The HSE has also revealed that in 2009, the most recent year for which statistics are available across the EU, the standardised rate of work-related fatal injury excluding traffic accidents was 0.59 per 100,000 workers in GB, the second lowest in the EU.

A national standard for the management of work-related road risk would be welcomed by businesses, and should include ‘back to basics' advice to practitioners about the processes and interventions they should be using to manage and lower their risk, according to new research by TRL.

Dr Shaun Helman, who led the research, said: "For some time, we have known that work-related road collisions represent a serious injury burden, with at least around a fifth and perhaps as many as a third of injury road collisions in Great Britain involving someone who is driving for work at the time."

One of the key general findings of the research was that the management of work-related road risk is widely perceived to be lagging behind the management of health and safety risk in the workplace.

Not-for-profit campaign group, the Association of Personal Lawyers (APIL), has criticised proposed new rules on how insurance companies search their historical records if a potential claim for compensation is being made against them, saying that they are “wide of the mark”.

Responding to a consultation by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) on new search procedures, APIL has pointed out that for injured or ill workers to successfully claim compensation, it must be established which insurers provided employers' liability cover at the time they were injured or exposed. However, this can sometimes be a problem, as APIL president Karl Tonks explained:

“Victims of asbestos-related disease can become ill many years after they are exposed at work, by which time the records can be harder to find. Sometimes they are never found and those people are left with nowhere to turn.”