What to Do If You Suffer an Accident?

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Car accident

The idea of suffering an accident isn’t something that anyone likes to think about, but it’s one of those things that are made easier when you know what to do. By following the steps listed below, it will be easier for you to find out the best way to get better with as little hassle or stress as possible.

Seek Medical Help

The first thing to do when you suffer any sort of accident is to look for medical help, even if you don’t notice anything immediately wrong. Figures from across the UK show that 550,000 out of 650,000 road traffic claims were related to whiplash injuries, which sometimes aren’t obvious immediately after the crash.

The first symptoms of whiplash can occur in just a few hours following the incident. However, the bruising and pain can get worse up to 48 hours later. In some cases, it can take up to a year or more for the effects of whiplash to disappear, while a trip to the local back and neck pain clinic could make the recovery easier and faster.

In other types of accidents, such as cycling collisions, trips, or falls, the immediate impact on your health might not be clear right away. This means that you need to be careful that you don’t go home and then find out later that something isn’t right.

Find Out if You Can Claim Compensation

Finding out right away whether you have any sort of serious injury is also important for another reason. This is the fact that you can possibly claim compensation if you suffer an injury following an accident. The key point to bear in mind here is that for you to make a claim, someone else needs to have been at fault.

As explained here, compensation for personal injury claims begins with the injured party contacting a solicitor, who will pull together all of the relevant paperwork to make a solid case. It can take around a year to settle this sort of claim, which is reasonably fast in terms of court cases.

Begin Your Recovery

With the previous points covered, you can begin to look at getting back to good health as quickly as possible. If you got medical help at the beginning and then sorted out any compensation claim that was possible, this will help you to get a smoother and more stress-free recovery period.

It’s important to follow doctor’s orders and stay off work for as long as needed to get back to full fitness again. The UK’s Statutory Sick Pay is available for up to 28 weeks, and it gets paid by your employer in the same way that they pay your wages normally.

With luck, you’ll never have to worry about dealing with the consequences of an injury of this type. However, if you do suffer an accident then knowing what step to take is going to make the recovery process so much easier for you.