We have known for some time now that Britons have the weakest necks in Europe. The next shocking revelation of this kind could come with official confirmation that Brits’ minds are no stronger than their cervical vertebrae, whilst upper lips are now reported to be flopping about limply all over the shop.
Post-Accident Neurotic Trauma Syndrome (PANTS) is poised to become the new whiplash, sources warned this week, as profit-crazed lawyers up and down the land cast frantically about for a successor to the erstwhile licence to print that was whiplash.
Their plan is as brilliantly simple as it is fiendish: buy up medico-legal agencies – or simply invent them if you can’t find one – then refer all accident victims to them so you can compile spuriously lurid reports detailing the full PANTS impact of every crash.
Insurers are already reporting a torrent of PANTS claims. The ABI’s James “Duellin’” Dalton spoke vividly this week of a “slow yet steady increase” in claims for psychological injury following RTAs which are now being reported in over 1% of whiplash cases.
So-called lawyers couldn’t give a fig about their clients and are only doing it to get rich, he argues, insisting that “in many cases where a claim for psychological injury is made, that claim is often being advanced for the benefit of the claimant’s solicitor rather than the claimant themselves, given that the former is seeking to maximise the fee income that can be derived from the claim.” It’s consumers who will ultimately suffer, he promised.
Lawyers and their medico-legal reporting puppets aren’t even bothering to get crash victims comfortable on a chaise longue or couch before diagnosing PANTS, insurers complain, with “students” carrying out post-crash mental weirdness assessments over the phone.
“It’s like doing over-the-phone physiotherapy,” marvelled “one source” speaking to compliancy services provider Compliancy Services, from whose website Bankstone News nicked this story. “How does that even work?”
Bankstone News for one has absolutely no idea.
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