Car Crash

Recently a good friend of mine had a minor car crash on the way to work, nothing too serious, a bit of a fender bender as they would say in America, although here we just call it a damned nuisance. All that happened was the car behind him which was filtering in to the traffic in his lane was a little over zealous and bumped the rear corner of his car, nothing major, a bit of a dent and scraped paintwork, nothing more serious and no injuries to either party (or so he thought) so they pulled over and exchanged documents and details and off the each went on their journey to work, not really in any worse condition than when they had left the house shortly before, with the obvious exception of a dent in their bumpers.

A few weeks later my friend had a letter through the post, apparently the other party wanted to sue for damages, saying that the impact had caused whiplash and he was now off work because of it, having heard the story a few times now, and knowing the speeds involved, neither of us can imagine how he could possibly have whiplash from a gentle bump with him being the car which ran into my friends.

Anyway to cut a long story very short, it did go to court, my friend took legal advice and didn’t even attend the hearing himself, just submitted a written statement and won the case.  It seemed rather obvious that he would, seeing as the other driver was clearly in the wrong as it was he who was filtering into the lane, not vice versa. So we got to discussing why he would he have tried this? What was he hoping to achieve? And, did he really believe he had an opportunity to win the case?

We basically couldn’t really answer any of these questions, but it did make us realise that if something like this happens it’s certainly worth taking some legal advice.

Now I am not a personal injury solicitor, if you need one it’s a good idea to try to find someone locally so if you are in Wiltshire look for a personal injury solicitor Swindon, a lawyer in Gloucester or Cheltenham personal injury solicitor. If however you are in the Oxford regionI would find a personal injury solicitor Oxford. A good Personal injury solicitor will be able to advise about all manner of incidents, not just road traffic accidents, but also accidents at work or clinical negligence, most of the time their services are free too, as they offer no win no fee type services to the public