Crash victims pressured to claim compensation within hours of an accident
Crash victims are being pestered by personal injury lawyers and claims management companies to make a claim for compensation just hours after being involved in a car accident.
New research from LV= car insurance reveals one in twenty (6%) crash victims are contacted by a claims management company or personal injury lawyer within just two hours of their accident, with the pressure to seek compensation often being piled on while they are receiving medical care. The number of people who have been contacted following an accident has increased by 52% since 2010 to two thirds (67%) of victims - despite accident rates falling.
Opportunistic claims management companies are even approaching people at the scene of the accident in order to get their details straight away, while others are approaching patients at the hospital and setting up information desks in patient waiting rooms. As a result, almost half (48%) of crash victims targeted by claims companies are contacted within just 24 hours by these organisations and pressured to claim for compensation. Many are persistently pursued in the weeks after, sometimes on a daily basis, with one victim reporting that he was contacted 340 times following his accident and hounded to make a claim.
The fees charged by an accident management company can be equivalent to half the accident victim's compensation payout if the claim is successful. A quarter of claimants (24%) say they wouldn't have made a claim if it hadn't been for pressure applied by a third party. Of those who made a claim, nearly half (48%) say they were pressured to do so by a claims company or legal firm specialising in personal injury, with a further one in five (20%) reporting they were encouraged to claim compensation by a police officer.
Official police figures obtained by a freedom of information request from LV= car insurance reveals a number of Police forces share accident victims' details in exchange for a fee. The Metropolitan Police has received more than £5 million from third parties since 2009 for the contact details of people involved in road traffic accidents. Hampshire Constabulary has received more than £480,000 since 2010 for this information while Fife Constabulary has made £194,000.
It is not against the law to pass on the contact details of accident victims to other service providers with the victims' consent, but legislation due to be implemented in April 2013 will see a ban on the payment and receipt of referral fees in personal injury cases and will cap lawyers' fees on successful claims. This pending legalisation has prompted a whiplash ‘gold rush' and claims companies are now hounding people regardless of whether they have been injured or not. In fact, almost a third (29%) of those who made a claim admitted they exaggerated their injury to get compensation and a further one in ten (10%) say they made up the injury entirely to get the money. Attempting to make a compensation claim when you do not have an injury is against the law and could lead to a hefty fine or prison sentence.
John O'Roarke, Managing Director of LV= car insurance, comments: "The heavy-handed tactics of the ‘claims farming' industry has resulted in record levels of compensation claims for whiplash and other personal injuries - despite falling accident rates. Crash victims are being aggressively targeted by those who can make money out of their details and they are literally hounding them to make a claim within moments of an accident. Those tempted to make a claim when they do not have an injury should think again as making a fraudulent claim could lead to a hefty fine or prison sentence."
For further details, log on to lv.com.