UK Motorists Deliberately Causing Accidents to Claim Big Checks

The cost of insurance is on a steady upward incline in the UK, as only a year ago drivers were paying (on average) £633 per car, but costs have risen by 40 percent to £892 and there was a similar 40% increase the year before and the year before that.

With the government doing everything it can to lower accident numbers, you’d expect the premiums to go down a bit. The insurance companies say it isn't their fault, and that they are paying more in claims than they bring in with premiums.

The main reason, according to the insurance firms, is a huge increase in litigation fuelled by the expansion of the "no win, no fee" scheme that has raised legal bills across the board. These lawyers are said to be responsible for the majority of the 200 injury claims lodged every day, according to a recent Telegraph post.

A recent inquiry discovered that the insurance premium increase was caused mainly by a “rapid growth in the number of personal injury claims management firms, which are using direct cold-call marketing techniques to encourage people to make claims who otherwise would not have done so. [These claims are] for injuries that in fact, have not been suffered or which may not be as severe as claimed: typically mild soft-tissue damage causing pain in neck and shoulders (whiplash), which is difficult to medically diagnose.”

More alarming is a recent survey that found that 1 in 20 drivers under the age of 35 deliberately braked their cars, “in such a way as to cause the following motorist to collide with them, placing the responsibility for meeting the claim on the following driver.”