The press often talk about a "Compensation Culture". They refer to people who make bogus claims for compensation or cause accidents by driving into each other so that they can claim compensation from their friend's insurance. However, for the majority of people the reality that there is no real compensation culture in the UK. Many people refuse to make a claim for compensation when they have suffered a real and serious injury through no fault of their own. In this case the only beneficiary of them refusing to claim compensation is the insurance industry. It is worth looking at the basic English legal system and how it has developed to see why compensation is payable. The law of tort is not very exciting, but it has been with us for hundreds of years. It is this law that covers claims for compensation, and the law basically states that: If one person owes another a duty of care, and he breaches that duty of care causing the other person to suffer loss or injury the other person should be put back in the position they were in had the accident not occurred. Let's break that down to see what it really means in the circumstances of a whiplash accident: If one person owes another a duty of care... Every car driver owes all other car drivers a duty of care. You are driving a potentially dangerous vehicle so the duty of care is fairly self explanatory. ...and he breaches that duty of care.... If you drive your dangerous vehicle into another person or another vehicle then you have breached the duty of care that you owed to the other person. ....causing the other person to suffer loss or injury.. If that other person suffers a whiplash injury, or their car is damaged, and this loss was caused by the breach of duty (the crash) they are then entitled to compensation. The Road Traffic Act made the purchasing of car insurance compulsory and spawned a very profitable insurance industry. Therefore, it is the insurance industry that usually has to make the payments on behalf of their insured if their insured breaches the duty of care and injures someone else or damages their property. The law of tort is well developed, as is the insurance industry. There are many different statistics but many of them confirm that the number of whiplash and other accident claims made each year generally remains the same. Another statistic that is rarely given as much press coverage as the "compensation culture" articles is the fact that many, many people that could claim compensation choose not to do so!
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