Whiplashinfo.co.uk | Introduction

0.1 Despite considerable advances in the appearance, speed, complexity and design of mass production automobiles; despite speed limits on motorways and all other roads, police crackdowns on drinking and driving and ever more stringent MOTs and driving tests, hundreds of thousands of road traffic accidents occur in England and Wales every year. A significant proportion of these result in whiplash injuries to occupants.

0.2 Whiplash injuries are difficult beasts to tie down and tame. Fractures can often be seen on x-ray and therefore diagnosed. Victims of soft tissue injuries often complain of pain and restricted neck movement, dizziness, headaches, pins and needles and a range of other problems without any broken bones or clearly identifiable lesion.¹ They are usually x-rayed at hospital after the accident and discharged home the same day. With so many major injuries coming into hospital Accident and Emergency Departments each day whiplash injuries naturally enough rank low on the list of priorities. Yet as the symptoms fail to resolve, as long absence from work leads to loss of employment, financial hardship and reliance on state benefits, as repeated examinations by the Defendant's medico-legal experts cast the cloud of functional overlay² or malingering onto the injured persons' suffering, victims sometimes descend into depression, exaggeration and despair.

0.3 Throughout the United Kingdom, from small one partner firms in Cornwall to massive specialised personal injury firms with hundreds of partners, solicitors face similar problems day after day. Likewise barristers from small sets of chambers in the provinces to large specialised sets in London grapple with a similar range of problems on paper and in court. Judges in county courts and the High Court make decisions on these problems every day.

0.4 If a Claimant has suffered a whiplash injury in a road traffic accident which medical expert should be chosen to provide the report on the severity of the