With car insurance soaring who is cashing in on car crashes?

Horrified by the rise in your latest car insurance premium? You won’t be the only one.
The average quote for comprehensive annual cover has hit a record £971 – more than double the £446 it was in 2005 – an AA survey of 2,550 motorists will show next week.
Already facing sky-high petrol and diesel prices and the soaring cost of living, drivers must wonder how insurance firms can justify the hike.

A Mirror investigation has revealed drivers are paying the price for greed, fraud and dodgy practices in Britain’s £9.4billion motor insurance market – and a whole variety of reasons why premiums are rocketing:
THE biggest reason for the leap in motor insurance bills is a wave of legal claims for “whiplash” – neck pain from being hit from behind.
A report published last week by the House of Commons transport select committee found whiplash claims had jumped by a third since 2008 to 570,000 a year – despite the number accidents falling. Insurers claim this has added £90 to the average policy.
An estimated £2billion a year is paid out in compensation for such claims, but a survey of GPs recently warned that about a quarter of them are “fake or over-diagnosed”.
Insurers often settle out of court because they are hard to disprove.
Simon Douglas, director of AA Insurance, said: “A culture has ­developed that if another vehicle hits your car, you should make an injury claim. That’s regardless of how serious the injury is, or even if no injury has actually been suffered.”


Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2012/01/14/horrified-by-the-rise-in-your-latest-car-insurance-premium-you-won-t-be-the-only-one-115875-23698357/#ixzz1jzkwJLPM

Asda worker wins £21k payout after chain spied on her because they didn't believe she'd broken back slipping on an egg

Grandmother didn't know she had been followed until compensation hearing three years later

‘I felt sick when I saw the footage, it just left me numb'

A supermarket sent a private detective to film one of its workers as she recovered from a serious back injury sustained when she slipped on a broken egg in the store warehouse.

Grandmother Irene Heslop was left with a suspected spinal fracture after falling on to a concrete floor at the Asda store where she had been employed as a bakery assistant for seven years.

Mrs Heslop was left unable to walk long distances or lift heavy equipment following the fall and approached bosses to ask to return to work on lighter duties, but was told no such work was available.


Around the same time, 15 months after the fall, the retail giant twice sent a spy to prove Mrs Heslop, now 65, was fit to work by filming her as she went about her daily chores.

The grandmother-of-two didn’t realise she had been followed until the footage was revealed three years after she was injured at the store in Hulme, Greater Manchester, during a compensation battle which saw her awarded a total of £27,000 for her injuries and loss of earnings.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080366/Asda-worker-wins-21k-payout-chain-spied-didnt-believe-shed-broken-slipping-egg.html#ixzz1iInmDciY