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Anon @ 11:36 - exactly right.

Since 2000 when CFAs came in, the number of personal injury claims registered with the CRU for non-RTA has been flat - in fact the number is lower now than it was in the early 2000s.

Non-RTA cases are just as open to the ambulance chasing no win-no fee brigade (free iPad or not), and just as open to someone falsely claiming some sort of soft tissue damage that supposedly can't be proved either way.

The only difference between how these claims are handled is that after an RTA everyone contact their insurers, and maybe a car repairer, meaning details of accident victims are collected, and people can be persuaded into making a claim that they might otherwise not have done. It's not that these claims are bogus (although a small number are), it's that they are targeted and encouraged to claim.

It's no coincidence that between 2000 and 2004, like non-RTA claims, motor PI claims were also flat. In 2004 the referral fee ban was lifted, insurers and others could start making money from referrals. RTA claims then began to rise.

For example, in 2011, 6% of Admiral Group's profits came from referral fees.

The same procedures and the same protections against fraud exist currently in RTA and non-RTA claims, but the rise in claim volume has only happened in RTA. If the insurers want to get levels of RTA claims down (bogus or genuine) they need to get their own house in order.

If the problem was no win-no fee, greedy solicitors, dodgy claimants or any of the other supposed causes of the "compensation culture", things would be the same for all types of claim - and they aren't.

Banning large numbers of accident victims from being able to put right what has been done to them is not a fair solution.