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orthopaedic surgeons and trying to determine which is to be preferred. The adversarial process used in England and Wales is a tool to assist the judge in assessing the witnesses and making the decision. However the adversarial process is carried out verbally and often without reference to standard texts or research or any generally agreed medical yardsticks. Complicated points of anatomy are examined in detail often without any reference to medical texts showing the structures allegedly damaged. Long term prognoses are passed without reference to the vast array of detailed research material available today or to any major orthopaedic texts. So the judge is sometimes left to assess the medical evidence by considering the relative performance of the doctors in the witness box, pitted against the oral skills of counsel, rather than by reference to recognised main stream medical opinion.

0.9 The purpose of this book (set out as a web site) is to seek to bridge the divide between medical learning and legal practise. To bring together mainstream legal and medical views in one text and to provide a bank of reference material to help lawyers and doctors who are dealing with whiplash injuries to reach consensus.

0.10 When one goes into a legal bookshop, medical texts are as rare as consensus in Formula One motor racing. Yet if lawyers are to be equipped to determine whether a case should be settled it is their duty to try to understand and distinguish between opposing medical views.

0.11 Included in this text are a few medical diagrams. If further diagrams are sought I heartily recommend Anne M.R Agur's quite excellent book "Grants Atlas of Anatomy" International edition, covering inter alia the anatomy of the neck and spine.

0.12 I am enormously grateful to the eminent consultants who kindly agreed to write the specialist chapters on the various parts of the human anatomy which are commonly injured in road traffic accidents involving whiplash. Their task was far harder than mine. I have simply attempted to summarise the law relating to medical reports and evidence and how to assess quantum in whiplash cases. The medical experts have had the enormous task of bringing together the published