You’re in a rush. It’s a dark, wet Monday morning in January. You want to cross the main road on foot at traffic lights, using the pedestrian crossing there; but the lights are green for vehicles - and red for you to cross. On the approach to the traffic lights for vehicles, there are two bus stops. It’s a predominantly residential area. You decide you have to risk crossing on red. Dashing onto the crossing, you suddenly realise an approaching car is bearing down on you. It’s about 5m away and travelling close to the speed limit of 30mph. Your brain freezes with panic. You've misjudged the speed of the oncoming vehicle. You’re rooted to the spot. Paralysed with fear. It's too late to get out of the way. Though the car driver instinctively swerves to avoid you, having only noticed you late, the collision is inevitable. The impact throws you up onto the bonnet. Your head hits the nearside windscreen, causing a “bullseye” break in the glass - i.e. a spider’s web-like Continue Reading
How the Cost of Living Crisis affects the Value of Your Personal Injury Claim
In July 1971, a sliced white loaf of bread would have cost you 10 pence. In July 2021 the cost would have been £1.06. The Retail Price Index ("RPI") shows an average cost for the same loaf of bread as £1.36 in July 2023. The rise in prices over time is known as inflation. It can also be described as the decline of purchasing power over time. In the present Cost of Living Crisis, the upward trend in prices is affecting most things and that includes personal injury compensation (compensation also sometimes referred to as “damages”). The injury part - for the "pain and suffering" associated with the injuries - of a personal injury compensation claim is just one element of the value of the claim as a whole. Other elements can include wage loss and necessary travel expenses. In this article, we are only discussing the injury part of personal injury claims. This can be variously described as "pain and suffering", General Damages and solatium. Continue Reading
Why the crucial road accident information to get is the registration number
If you have been injured as a result of a road traffic accident, although it is the driver of the vehicle at fault for the accident who bears the blame, it is their insurance company that will pay your compensation in most cases. As a result, you and your solicitors want to find out as quickly as possible who those insurers are and how best to contact them. There is a lot of information you can usefully gather to give to your solicitor following a road traffic accident but what do you think is the single most important piece of information? What you absolutely want to get if you can is the registration number of the vehicle which caused the accident. This applies whether you were the driver or occupant of a different vehicle to that one, a passenger in the vehicle where the driver was at fault, a motorcyclist,a pedal cyclist or a pedestrian. In the “best case”, you will be well enough and quick-witted enough to get the registration number yourself. But that won’t Continue Reading
Pedestrians and cyclists to have more priority over drivers in Highway Code changes
Walking and cycling have become more popular during the pandemic. So-called “active travel” has benefits for personal health as well as the environment. Department for Transport figures show that, over the last year, there’s been a 46% increase in the number of miles cycled on British roads. Tellingly, that’s a larger increase than in all of the previous 20 years combined. To take even one corner of Moray as an example... While the Lossiemouth - Elgin cycle path beside the A941 has been an active travel benefit for many years, the long-mooted track to connect Lossiemouth to Hopeman has only recently gained significant traction, despite years of campaigning. Now that the charitable organisation (SCIO) Laich of Moray Active Travel Routes is in existence, and with help from Sustrans, a connection between Lossiemouth and Covesea is coming. Hopefully, the final link from Covesea to Hopeman - to cover places such as the Green Road, Gordonstoun and Duffus - will not be far Continue Reading
Help From The Other Driver’s Insurer (How To Avoid Being Misled)
An "innocent third party car claim" is how some motor insurers describe what you have if one of their customers has crashed into your vehicle and it’s not your fault. In other words, the motor insurers in question are the third-party insurers, not your own motor insurers. Their customer was to blame for the accident. The third-party insurers’ offer to you is that you should let them take care of you and your vehicle in sorting things out. This help from the other driver's insurer can include: the repair of your vehicle (or a payment to represent its value if it has been written off), use of a hire vehicle, free of charge, while your own vehicle is being repaired; and help if you have been injured – to include treatment/rehabilitation and compensation. But couldn't you deal through your own insurers? If you have comprehensive motor insurance, one of your options is to deal with a claim for damage to your car through your own motor insurers. This can be an involved process. You may Continue Reading
If you travel with a drunk driver and get injured
If you travel with a drunk driver and get injured due to their bad driving, does that mean you can’t claim? A September 2019 poll commissioned by Glasgow-based solicitors, Dallas MacMillan, indicated that two-thirds of those polled believed that if you agree to be a passenger in a car driven by someone you know is under the influence of alcohol, you won’t be able to claim compensation from the driver if they crash the car and you’re injured. This 66% (or so) majority are mistaken in their understanding of the law. People injured in such circumstances can claim successfully – and you may be surprised by how fully they can claim. We agree that travelling with a driver who is under the influence is a very bad idea. On the other hand, you should not lose sight of the fact that passengers in vehicles very rarely have no compensation claim available to them if they are injured in an accident. In this article, we’ll look at the law on accidents involving passengers in vehicles driven Continue Reading
Avoiding Child Pedestrian Accidents
School crossing patrols stopped in Moray from 20 August 2019. Meaning no more lollipop people to guide our children across the roads. We have to hope that the publicity this controversial Council cutback has received will mean all drivers will take extra special care when in the vicinity of any Moray school. In this article, we will consider 3 matters in relation to pedestrian road traffic accidents involving children. Firstly, we will consider the evidence about road safety measures such as school crossing patrols and why they provide useful benefits. We will then go on to look at the relative duties of drivers and child pedestrians and what scope there is for some of the blame falling on the injured child (contributory negligence). Finally, by means of an example, we will examine the issues that can arise along with contributory negligence, including possible shifting of blame onto a parent who has not taken proper care for their child's safety (in letting them out alone Continue Reading
How safe are you on Moray’s roads?
1,793 people were killed on Britain’s roads in 2017. That figure comes from statistics published by the Road Safety Foundation ('RSF') in July 2019. It means that average of 73 people were killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads every day. In spite of ongoing improvements in vehicle safety, the annual number of fatalities has changed little since 2011. Across Europe as a whole, the ambitious long-term goal is that, by 2050, we should be getting close to zero road deaths – which would mean road travel achieving similar safety levels to rail and air travel. The good news in Scotland is that we have made measurable progress in improving road safety over the last 3 years. During that time, the risk of death and serious injury has fallen by about 7% across motorways and ‘A’ roads in Scotland. Scotland now has the lowest rate for deaths/serious injury per head of population for travel on major routes – at 13 per billion vehicle kilometres. (In England, it’s 15 and, in Continue Reading
Why a cyclist’s fault for an accidental injury can have drastic financial consequences
Ned Ryerson must be one of the most beloved “annoying” characters in film history. He is the insurance salesman from Phil Connors’ past who keeps turning up to bug Phil. He appears at the same point on Phil’s walk from his Punxsutawney guesthouse to Gobbler's Knob, as Groundhog Day repeats over and over again. It’s one of my all-time favourite films – one which includes a happy ending for Ned, as he explains: “I have not seen this guy for 20 years but he comes up to me and then he buys whole life, term, uniflex, fire, theft, auto, dental, health – with the optional death and dismemberment plan – water damage… Phil, this is the best day of my life!” The “optional death and dismemberment plan” may be a joke (maybe it isn’t) but the list of so many different types of insurance illustrates that insurance is varied and can be complicated. And while it’s possible to be over-insured, so it’s possible to be under-insured – and under-insurance is one of the things we’ll look at Continue Reading
What are the main reasons why a driver will be to blame for an accident?
Brené Brown is an American research professor. She is based at the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. She is a best-selling author, covering topics such as shame, vulnerability, empathy and courage. Describing herself as a researcher and storyteller, in this revealing and entertaining animated video, she also describes herself as a “blamer”. She manages to make blaming her husband, Steve (for her dropping - and splashing over herself - a full cup of coffee), sound understandable and reasonable. All he did was come home half an hour late the evening before and shorten her night’s sleep by the same amount. But for his lateness, however, she wouldn’t have been so tired as to need the second cup of coffee she then spilt on herself. As Brene Brown asks: how many of us go to that place, when something bad happens? Where the first thing we want to know is: “whose fault is it?” And we’d rather it be our fault than no one's fault - because it gives Continue Reading
Why cyclists must get legal advice about a possible personal injury claim
The volume of water that breaks off Antartica as icebergs each year is greater than the total global consumption of freshwater. And icebergs are pure freshwater. Not for the first time, schemes have been proposed to tow icebergs to hot, water-stressed regions of the world. In Spring 2018, for example, before the rains finally came, the four million people in Cape Town, South Africa, came perilously close to ‘Day Zero’ – when they would run out of water. Though the idea of using icebergs in this way originated as long ago as the 19th Century, no plan has ever been put into action. The idea makes even more sense when you think of icebergs otherwise being “wasted” by melting into the salty seas. Of course, another feature of icebergs is that much more of them lie below the waterline than above. Ships need to be aware that initial appearances are deceptive where icebergs are concerned. In this article, we are going to consider why a superficial approach does not work and why Continue Reading
When can you claim for the loss in value of a repaired car?
Where there is a personal injury claim arising out of a road traffic accident, there is often a claim for damage to a car as well. As we have discussed elsewhere, claims for damage to vehicles will be valued on the basis of the lower of: the cost of repairs; and the net pre-accident value of the vehicle (in other words, the pre-accident value of the vehicle, less any scrap value). Another way of putting it is to say that, if the cost of repairing your vehicle will be “too high” relative to its value, the maximum you will get for it will be its net pre-accident value. What if your car was very new when it was damaged? In that case, while it may be economical to repair the vehicle, you might well feel that your repaired vehicle - even if it has been very well repaired – has lost value compared to what it would have been worth for resale if it had not been in an accident at all. It’s an interesting question: whether the owner of a car which is damaged in a road traffic Continue Reading