The recent comments that Jeremy Clarkson made on Top Gear, slamming whiplash claimants for committing ‘insurance fraud’ are particularly infuriating, bearing in mind the injuries he himself suffered back in 2008 having driven a Renault Magnum lorry through a wall at 56mph – the vehicle’s maximum legal speed, at a test track near Milton Keynes.
In his Sun Newspaper article shortly after the accident, Mr Clarkson described the smash as his first serious road accident for 31 years.
He also said he had decided that before being allowed on the road “everyone should be made to drive at high speed into a wall”. He added: “… I emerged from my high speed head-on impact in what can only be described as screaming agony. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think.”
His injuries included an index finger that looked like “a burst sausage” and heavy bruising to his shin and back.
He wrote: “Everyone should experience this before they are given a licence…It would let them know that crashes really, really hurt and that it would be a good idea to not have one.”
Clarkson’s co-presenter Richard Hammond has also had his fair share of accidents. In 2006 Hammond was badly injured when the jet-powered car he was driving crashed at high speed during filming for the BBC show, and in 2009 was involved in a 4-car pile-up.
Head of Personal Injury at Abacus, Robin Torr comments: “Perhaps what Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t realise is, that not everyone can recover from the trauma and injuries sustained in a road traffic accident, and not everyone has the income, savings, or acquired wealth to get them through the distressing time. Not only are RTA injuries often serious and sometimes prolonged, they can affect self-esteem, the ability to go back to work and in extreme cases the ability to go back to life as it was before.”
At Abacus Solicitors, our Personal Injury team helps innocent victims of car accidents large and small recover £000s in compensation each year. If you have been injured in a road traffic accident, call the Personal Injury team on 0161 833 0044 or email your details to personalinjury@abacus-law.co.uk.