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This makes me really cross - and fiddlesticks, I've just realised it's my first day back after a holiday and I've not managed to finish it without feeling compelled to 'rant' on the Gazette website.

I too have been involved in one or two 'low velocity' accidents. But low velocity for whom? We are all individuals, and all have individual bodies with individual stress points. What is a mere irritation for some can be a totally incapacitating injury for others. Therefore, doesn't that mean that the concept of low velocity should be subjective and not objective? After the latest of my 'LVI' crashes, I am still having problems now , maybe because the offending car came out of a side road, I saw it coming, I therefore tensed and turned my body and neck. I already have a longstanding neck/shoulder problem which has flared up and is only now going back to the levels it was at before the impact. Does the fact that I did have this issue preclude me from being injured? I was medically examined and was very open with the examining doctor who told me that the accident 'hadn't done me any favours due to my complicated shoulder problem'. Was it my fault that I should have been in the car on that particular day and that the other driver had a lapse of concentration? No. It was not. So why should I be restricted in what I can claim for and how I can make that claim.

Similarly, I was driven into from behind in what would be considered again a LVI crash as I was stationary in a traffic queue. My car jerked quite violently but I managed not to allow it to be pushed forward. I had a bad neck, shoulder and upper back area for around two years, with lingering issues thereafter and have been told by a number of phsyiotherapists etc that I cannot discount the fact that the injury I sustained in that accident (which was around 17/18 years ago) has contributed to my lingering chronic pain issues. A 'simple' whiplash injury. If there is such a creature.

So, I become cross when the laudable attempts by the legal profession to put a stop to fraudulent actions - which I wholeheartedly agree with - is conflated by the 'media' into an opportunity to bring out its full barrage of attacks on wrongfully injured people and their valid attempts to gain compensation for actions not of their doing.

Fraud is wrong. Bringing a valid claim for compensation for wrongful injuries is not. The fact that some villain somewhere had the bright idea that it was easy to work the system to show a whiplash claim doesn't mean that EVERY whiplash claim is made by a villain.

I admit to the fact that I too once thought a 'whippy' must be an injury that was embellished by sufferers in anticipation of payment, but that was very early on in my career and boy was I wrong. I would gladly swap the pain for the compensation paid if I could.

Or perhaps that's next? Line up here all those who have malevolently and against public interest, selfishly claimed for whiplash injuries - you need to pay it all back once we've introduced the tariff as clearly you've been putting it on all these years. The public must be appeased!

Simply put, there is no catchall way to define a low velocity impact, nor a catchall way to define a 'simple whiplash'. Maybe when we're all robots...

Well; rant over. Last time I catch up on the Gazette e-mails on my first day back...

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