Car accident and compensation

[HEIHEI23]

At the start of last year I was in an accident whilst 30 weeks pregnant. I was stopped at traffic lights and someone went into the back of me whilst trying to move lanes. This was caught on camera from a shops CCTV and a police report also confirmed it. I went to get checked at A and E and was asked to come back for a scan a week later. I attended two further times due to pain in my pelvis and concern about the baby. Luckily baby was absolutely fine which is what I'm most grateful for. I attended a doctors appointment as requested by insurance who put injuries down as strong anxiety following incident and abdominal soft tissue Injury (non whiplash). I spent the rest of my pregnancy worrying about whether baby was going to be ok!
I've not had any word from the other insurer apart from accepting liability a few weeks after the crash. Is this normal? I was hoping for some compensation to put into savings for the baby as that was what I was most concerned about. How much would you expect to get? My car is still awaiting being fixed as the part they need is on back order 🙄

Yes, you'll probably find a paralegal has carriage of your case with a solicitor signing off the important bits. It's fine to use your insurers, I just prefer to cut out the middle man and have a solicitor who works just for me. I say this as a lawyer and someone who made her own claim (with the anxiety being the biggest issue for me too).

Maybe give them a ring and ask what is the status of your claim and if you're not happy you can have a firm of your choosing take over.

I am sick to the back teeth of this board being populated with responses from people who don't have a clue what they're talking about.

You absolutely do not need to show a financial loss- there are judicial guidelines for personal injury, which basically set out the scale of payments certain injuries fall into. You can look these up but be aware the top end of the scale for each payment are for exceptional cases, don't get your hopes up too much.

It's a wide scale though so say for example your injury is in the guidelines as being worth 3 to 8 k, the amount agreed will come down to your consultant report that should outline the injury, recovery time, expected recovery time, and impact on your day to day life.

You should have seen two consultants, one psychiatrist for the anxiety, and one for the soft tissue injury. If you've only seen one consultant, query this with your representatives and hammer home that the psychological effects of the accident are the biggest impact for you.

Normally what happens is you/ your representatives send a letter of claim, and they either admit liability or dispute it. Sounds like this has been done.

Then reports from aforementioned specialists are furnished - at this stage the insurer may come back with an offer. You and your representatives may accept this offer, or try to shake the tree a little more.

If no settlement can be made, then court proceedings will begin. This is the bit that drags it out, and the time it takes will depend on the value of your claim and whether it would be heard in the high court (High value) or county court (lower value). I won't get too much into that process because it probably won't get that far, but I hope that helps and if you have any further questions just shout :)

Do you have legal cover on your insurance policy? We always do ever since my dh had a crash that wasn’t his fault. A few months after the accident we received a cheque for £3.5k. We didn’t even realise at the time that we had legal cover or that our insurance company were pursuing a claim so it was a nice surprise.

Wow some of the comments on this thread are unbearably rude!
you absolutely can claim compensation for any car accident, injuries or not!! The emotional stress and anxiety a car accident causes can be life changing and definitely deserves to be compensated. My family and I were in a car accident on a motorway a few months ago which wasn’t our fault and our car was wrote off because of it, just dealing with the stress of speaking to insurers every day and sorting out a new car etc was worth claiming for! It was a complete nightmare. I’m glad you and your baby are okay but if you’re anything like me, the thought of what could have happened completely takes over you and it takes a long time to recover from it.

we were instructed a solicitor to deal with our claim through our insurance company and they’re still dealing with it all for us, we had to provide certain information with our car being wrote off (info about what car seats we had etc as they can no longer be used and need replacing via the claim) we had to see a medical team via the solicitors and our reports were outside the boundary of whiplash same as yours so you should definitely be entitled to some kind of compensation for the stress and injury endured.
we are still waiting to hear the amount we’ll receive but our solicitors are confident we will be compensated so you should be the same! Maybe speak to your insurance company and see if they deal with certain solicitors within their company, we didn’t find ours ourself they were just instructed for us. I think the way they work is they take a cut of whatever compensation you receive as payment so you shouldn’t have to pay for them to represent you.
the day of our crash we spoke to our insurance company who said outright there is a pot of money put aside per person in the car at the time of the accident that will be given to you no questions asked (he said it was £1500) so might be worth asking your insurers about that aswell?
Hope you get it sorted - it is a real stress and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, especially not someone heavily pregnant!