Whiplash injuries account for 75% of all personal injury claims lodged in the UK, according to the ABI. Almost 1,200 claims are made for whiplash related injuries every single day. This equates to 40% more claims than any other European country. Unfortunately a large proportion of these claims are fraudulent, with whiplash symptoms easy to fake and hard to diagnose.This results in higher car insurance premiums for everyone.

The ABI intends to devise an action plan which will forge an effective partnership between personal injury solicitors, doctors and insurers to crackdown on bogus claims. Whiplash injuries have become synonymous with ‘no win no fee’ claims firms. These companies often persuade people who have had a very minor accident to file large personal injury claims.

The insurance industry is now fighting back with what has been called the whiplash lie detector test. It doesn’t measure blood levels or heart rate, but is a piece of software into which details of the accident are entered. Details such as the speed of the crash, the mass and weight of the cars, the visible damage and lastly the type of cars. This data is then processed by WITkit (for Whiplash Injury Toolkit) then gives you a probability that the person claiming whiplash injury, has been injured.

The test has been devised using similar work to the rating of car seats for their ability to prevent neck injury in a crash.