A new survey has discovered that Liverpool could be considered the whiplash capital of the UK, as the number of whiplash claims being made within the city leaves the rest of the country’s figures to pale in comparison.
22 out of every 1,000 people in Liverpool reported suffering from whiplash after a road traffic accident, which beat out both Uxbridge’s 21 and Oldham’s 20 to claim the dubious honour of the top spot. However, there are parts of Scotland that boast much lower figures, such as the Dundee and Edinburgh areas that have only three whiplash-related claims for every thousand general car accident claims, the survey discovered.
Spurious claims cost £2 billion every year the insurance industry says, which can account to an additional £90 being tacked on to every motorist’s insurance policy as a result. Things have gotten much worse in only a few years, as whiplash claims have rocket by 70 per cent over the second half of the last decade, even as the number of accidents actually declined by 23 per cent over the same period of time.
Scotland seems to have the safest and most honest drivers place in nearly every instance, as a Freedom of Information request discovered that 90 per cent of the postcodes with the least number of whiplash-related claims occurred within the country. Industry experts say that this could be the result of a legal system which has much more stringent controls in place than in other regions of the UK.