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Given that work takes up such a huge amount of our lives nowadays, we expect to be safe when working; i.e. not running in to any hazards whilst we get on with our jobs. Health and Safety in the workplace is of paramount importance, and employers must adhere to loads of rules and regulations to make sure employees do not come to harm whilst in the workplace.

Whilst differing rules and regulations apply more to varying areas of employment, one of the most basic areas of health and safety law that applies to any employment situation is tripping hazards!

We get a lot of enquiries from people looking to make compensation claims for tripping injuries at work. At the end of the day, it’s so easy to get caught out. A tile on the floor becomes raised and isn’t inspected or maintained regularly enough by the employer, and you have yourself an employee tripping over an obvious and dangerous defect. A colleague leaves some bags in a corridor and you walk straight in to them; the likelihood is you ending up on the floor, humiliated, and injured.
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If you have been involved in a road traffic accident and you were a passenger in one of the vehicles involved, you have excellent prospects of a successful claim for compensation. 

Even better, under a new system to deal with claims, you should get your compensation fast!

The reason you have excellent prospects of a successful claim are simple – it is highly unlikely that as a passenger you were to blame for the accident.  Short of severely distracting the driver, grabbing the steering wheel or pulling the handbrake, I cannot think of many circumstances where a passenger can be held to have caused a road traffic accident.  It doesn’t matter whether you were the passenger in the vehicle at fault either; you are still the innocent party and can be compensated al the same.
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Tripping accidents are relatively common – there are tonnes of hazards out there just waiting to, well literally, trip us up. If you have tripped over and want to know if you are due compensation for the injuries you have ended up with, you will need to contact a specialist personal injury lawyer to assess the case and perhaps take it on.

But in the meantime, here is a little advice about making a tripping accident claim and some facts you need to know about:

Who Is At Fault?
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A fair few people don’t make whiplash claims because they can’t be bothered with the ‘hassle’ or have been offered some money directly by an insurer and don’t think that getting an expert injury lawyer on board is worth it if when they may only get a couple of hundred pounds more compensation.  I would say this is the wrong way to approach things, and here’s why:

A new whiplash claiming system was introduced in April 2010 which drastically cut down the amount of time whiplash claiming takes.  Under the old system you had to get all your details together, produce a Letter of Claim which outlined these details and then send this to the Defendant who had a period of 21 days to acknowledge it and then a further 3 months from when they acknowledged the Letter of Claim to investigate your accident and come back with either an admission or denial of liability. 

For a very straightforward accident which was clearly the Defendant’s fault, it could take nearly 4 months for them to admit liability.  I could understand why some people got a little frustrated about this.  But this has all changed!
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At The Injury Lawyers we have found that some people don’t seem to realise that if they were the innocent passenger injured in a car crash, they have one of the best prospects of a successful claim for compensation you can get. 

It doesn’t matter whether the accident was the fault of the driver who’s car you were in or whether the accident was caused by some other vehicle – you were the passenger, and unless you did something daft like pull the handbrake, grab the steering wheel or severely distract the driver to cause the accident, there is little way you can be said to have been at fault for the accident. 

More often than not liability for your accident and injuries will be admitted straightaway, and it’s just a matter of getting medical evidence and settling your claim, which doesn’t take long at all.
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If I was given just a penny for each time I was asked how much someone’s whiplash claim was worth, I would be a very rich man!  (Well, almost!).  It is one of the most common, if not the most common, questions we get asked at The Injury Lawyers.

In the vast majority of whiplash claims we deal with, the innocent victim has been involved in a straightforward accident; say someone has driven into the back of their car, or hit them head on or pulled out of a side road into them.

These are claims where it should be easy to get an admission from the Defendant because it was clearly their fault and you would have thought that the amount of compensation people get will be similar.  Thing is, whiplash is a funny old injury that affects people in different ways, so the amount of compensation can differ a lot.
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I’m sure most of you reading this have gathered we are getting hit my the inevitable; I’ve always felt that after the incredible snow storms we weathered through in 2010 that it was only a matter of time we would see the worst of the seasons weather return.

The weather is dangerous – and accidents are likely.

Friday was when the midlands (or at least where I live!) was hit by the snow, and it laid very fast. I’d say there has been a good four or five settled inches which has largely survived the weekend of trampling footsteps and flattening car wheels. But waking up this morning to news of travel chaos and problems all across Britain’s travel infrastructure as planes are grounded at Heathrow, and motorists being urged to take extra care on the roads, is far too reminiscent of that insane November in 2010.
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Have you been injured when you were a passenger in a car or on a bus?  Good news – you have one of the best chances of a successful claim for compensation. 

Passenger injury claims are one of the easiest to assess because it is highly unlikely you were to blame for the accident.  Really, unless you pull the handbrake or were severely distracting the driver at the time of the accident, you cannot be at fault for the accident.  Say you were the passenger in a car when someone drives into the back of that car, how can you be at fault?  You can therefore be compensated for any injuries you get as a result.

Here are a couple of examples of good passenger claims.  You are on a bus which is involved in a crash, the crash is not your fault, you can seek compensation from whoever was at fault, e.g. the bus driver or the third party driver.  You pop out to the shops with a friend and someone drives into the rear of your friend’s car whilst you are waiting at traffic lights and you get whiplash, you can claim compensation for this whiplash.
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You know, when you really think about it, supermarkets can actually be pretty dangerous places. Shelves stacked full of all sorts of soft foods and liquids that can easily become a slipping hazard when spilt, or the sheer number of items on sale falling off shelves becoming a tripping hazard. What about the fact that they are usually crammed full of people doing their shopping all at once – especially on a Saturday or Sunday daytime! And with their kids as well!

Accidents in supermarkets are not uncommon at all; we are used to helping people out who have been injured through no fault of their own at the local supermarket. I know there’s the initial embarrassment and the feeling like you need to quickly disappear after you slip or trip in front of so many people, but in reality, you could have a claim for compensation for any injuries you receive.

Had a Supermarket Accident? Can You Claim?
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If you are claiming for compensation and the insurers representing the other side have admitted liability (i.e. agreed to pay out for your claim), it is quite common these days to receive a pre-medical offer – or pre-med as they are commonly referred to.

What is a pre-med offer? 

It is an offer of settlement, without the evidence and sight of a medical report, put forward by the third party insurer to the legal representative of the claimant. In today’s economic climate, for some individuals this may be quite tempting to accept at the early stage of an injury claim.
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