Insurance

What Is Whiplash?

Whiplash is a type of neck injury which is most commonly caused by road traffic accidents. If someone hits you from behind, your head is instantly thrown backwards. This can cause a lot of damage to the muscles in your neck that support your head.

What are the Symptoms?

Obviously, the most apparent symptom of a whiplash injury is a very sore neck. In addition to the neck pain, whiplash is likely to also result in any number of other physical symptoms. The most common symptoms include: dizziness, vertigo, a ringing in the ears, back, shoulder or jaw pain or difficulty swallowing. Not all whiplash injuries result in these symptoms but you will usually experience at least a few.

The damage that a whiplash injury can cause is unlikely to just be physical. There are also a number of psychological symptoms which you may experience following a serious case of whiplash. These symptoms might include: irritability, nervousness, depression, memory loss, disturbed sleeping patterns and a reduced ability to concentrate.

Whiplash claims

The trouble with whiplash injures is that a person who has been in a car accident could experience any number of these symptoms, or even all of them, and not have broken a single bone in their body or show any outward signs of being in an accident. For victims wanting to make whiplash claims this can make life very difficult. Just because whiplash usually only results in a soft tissue injury, the impact on the injured person's everyday life can be huge. Luckily, insurance companies are now a lot better at recognising the seriousness of whiplash injuries. Usually a simple report from your doctor confirming your injuries will be sufficient evidence for your insurance company to honour any whiplash claims.

If you do find you are having difficulty with your insurance company recognising the seriousness of your injuries, then persevere. The procedure that they make you go through is necessary to stop fraudulent claims slipping through the net. Due to whiplash injuries often showing no outwardly visible symptoms, people often try it on. In the past there have been many cases where people have tried to make whiplash claims for injuries that simply didn't exist. These sorts of whiplash claims do nothing but put up the price of car insurance premiums. Really we should be glad that the claims procedure is as strict as it is. In the end it benefits us.