Whiplash Insurance Claims
Will Claiming Whiplash Increase My Insurance Premium?
If you have had a car accident that was not your fault, you may wonder who is going to pay your compensation, and more importantly, will it affect your car insurance premium. These are important questions, and we need to look into how the claims are processed to find the answers.
If you are a car owner with motor insurance, if you are involved in a car accident and make a claim for whiplash, will it affect your car insurance premium? This appears a relatively straightforward question, yet we need to look at various factors to discover the answer.
1. Was The Accident Your Fault?
If you are involved in an accident, was it your fault? This will clearly depend on the circumstances of the accident, but let us look at the most common form of car accident - the rear end shunt.
The rear end shunt happens when one vehicle is stationary or moving slowly, and another vehicle drives into the back of it. Almost without exception, the driver that drives into the back of the slow or stationary one will be at fault for the accident. The following excuses are commonly used, but do not change the usual result.
The Other Driver Braked Suddenly
If you are driving you have a responsibility to keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front to allow for any sudden braking. By definition, if you do collide with a vehicle from behind because they braked suddenly, you were not leaving a big enough gap. Therefore, your failure to leave the right gap between your vehicle or theirs is the reason that the accident happened. If you are the vehicle hit from behind in these circumstances, your insurance premium should not be affected at all.
The Other Driver Failed To Move Off At A Roundabout Or Junction
We have all probably seen this accident quite a few times. One driver is at the front of a junction, often a roundabout. Another driver is coming up behind the first vehicle and sees that the junction is clear and assumes that the other driver will move off. They do not slow down sufficiently, and when the vehicle at the front of the junction takes no action, they end up driving into the back of it. Once again, the vehicle in front is not at fault. Even if they did not move off when it was clear to do so, the driver behind should have waited until they moved away before proceeding. That driver may well have their insurance premium adjusted, unless they have protected their no claims bonus.
2. What Happens When You Make A Whiplash Claim?
The next question is to understand what happens when you make a whiplash claim. If you are not at fault for an accident and have suffered an injury and vehicle damage, you need to make a claim. However, you actually claim from two different sources. Your vehicle damage claim would be made to your own insurer (and they would try and recover the costs from the other driver's insurance company), whilst your whiplash claim will be made directly to the other driver's insurance company. If your insurance company is able to claim the cost of the repairs back safely from the other driver's insurance company, your no claims bonus will not be affected and your insurance premium will not increase.
Making a whiplash claim may ensure that your premium does not increase as it will allow your insurer to "piggy back" on your claim to recover their outlay.
Summary
The only potential problem might occur if you do not make a claim for whiplash but the other driver, realising that you have not made a claim, tries to recover compensation for their whiplash injury from you. If this is sometime after the original accident then the evidence might be hard to find to support your version of events. However, if your insurer successfully made a claim for their outlay for repairing your vehicle, this will help to prove the accident was not your fault.
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