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Fake whiplash claims add GBP90 to each car insurance policy
Tue, 08 Nov 2011

While the number of car accidents in the UK has fallen, thousands of claims for whiplash mean that every driver has to add £90 to their car insurance policy.

According to statistics published by The King’s Fund think tank, over 47 per cent of doctors in the UK say the current claims system is flawed and encourages whiplash to be diagnosed ‘for maximum gain’. GPs believe that a quarter of the 600,000 whiplash claims made each year are ‘fake or over-diagnosed’.

A spokesman for the think-tank commented: "With over 1,600 diagnoses a day, the UK appears to have the weakest necks in the world."

James Dalton, of the Association of British Insurers, said whiplash claims were a ‘silent epidemic’. He said: "I can’t believe that people in the UK have weaker necks than our Continental cousins."

Mr Dalton also said that over the past three years, despite a 16 per cent fall in the number of accidents reported to police to just over 208,000, the number of whiplash claims has shot up by a third to 570,000 a year, which is one claim a minute. He pointed out that for every accident notified to police, this equates to 2.7 whiplash claims.
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