Back in the day, a much older friend of Bankstone News seems to recall, swapping tales of driving here and there in a hilariously drunken state were pretty much par for the jolly old course. Nowadays, of course, admitting to such a thing would be the moral equivalent of confessing to cat juggling.
So, we know drink-drivers/drunk-drivers are pariahs. But where else might we look, if we hoping to throw more than the first of the half-dozen heavyish stones we’ve gathered up into the folds of our dusty but modish robes in happy expectation of meting out some good old fashioned popular missile-based justice?
Funny you should ask that, because this week’s insurance tidings (via an informal plebiscite conducted by yellow insurance firm Uvavu, to whom we make no apology for referring two weeks in a row, given the extreme interestingness evinced by their every press-directed communication) revealed that whiplash fakers are (very nearly) every bit as reviled as those who choose to drink and drive.
While 88% of us frown upon drink-drivers, an almost equivalent 87% take an extremely dim view of feigning injury for personal profit or gain. As a point of comparison, a mere 79% of us have moral difficulties with those who knowingly purchase stolen goods.
Meanwhile, just 5% think faking an injury’s fine (a statistic that sits oddly alongside Uvavu’s contention that more than 10% of motor insurance claims involve faked injury). This modest level of condonement is positively dwarfed by the whopping 10% who think dodging train fares is fair, and the even whoppinger 11% who are extremely relaxed about people exceeding the speed limit in 30mph zones.
Uvavu’s General in Charge of Insurance Claims, Rob Downend applauds the public’s distaste for sham injury, welcoming the government’s plans to crack down on ‘bad apples’ and ‘put an end to the whiplash gravy train,’ and promising that Uvavu will pass on all the money saved by banning claims to decent honest customers, while legitimate claimants will qualify for something called “care not cash”.
The vast legions of Brits who decry injury fakery should hopefully have a lot less to rail against from here on in.
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