It is a comfort to know that increased safety features in cars such as airbags and impact bars mean that your chances of surviving a road accident these days are much greater. However, that does not necessarily mean you will walk away without a scratch, even if your injuries may not be obvious at the time, a few hours or even days later painful symptoms can manifest themselves leaving you incapacitated for days, weeks, months or even years after a car crash.

A classic example is whiplash or whiplash associated disorders (WAD). The impact of a crash usually throws the head of the passengers and driver of the car that is hit forward, at this point the delicate neck is stretched and extended as the heavier head is thrown forward, as the driver slams on the breaks, this forward motion is stopped suddenly and the extended neck snaps back violently, as the head hits the head rest.

This effect can happen even when you are in a stationary position - the classic shunt from behind - or when going slowly in a queue of traffic. As you can imagine, this sudden extension then snapping back of the fragile neck causes all sorts of internal trauma around the neck, back and shoulder region, stretching and tearing tendons, muscles, ligaments and blood vessels, even damaging nerves.

Initially the adrenalin of coping with the crash may mask any symptoms but within hours of the accident, painful stiffness in the neck and shoulder area, headaches, nausea, dizziness, pins and needles in the arms and hands, lower back pain even blurred vision, ringing in the ears or loss of concentration can develop as a result of a whiplash injury. The most important thing is to get it checked out as soon as possible by a doctor. Hoping you will feel better in the morning after a night's rest simply will not do the trick. The injury needs to be assessed and correctly treated.

Whiplash is a recognized injury and is classified on a scale of varying degrees of severity. This rating aspect is important when it comes to assessing the impact the injury has had on your daily life especially when making a claim for compensation. The severity of the injury can vary enormously depending on the health and age of the person, the braking speed and impact and even where the head rest was. You may well be in a neck brace, taking anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers for weeks after the incident. If this affects your capacity to carry out your job and daily life, a good personal injury lawyer can get the ball rolling for you and lodge a claim on your behalf.

There are moves afoot to speed up claims for people injured in road accidents if the claim is between £1,000 and £10,000. As nearly 75% of all personal injury claims are related to road accidents this is very good news as on average claims can take up to 2 years or more to settle. This new streamlined procedure put forward by the Ministry of Justice would whittle this down to a speedy 60 days so you get your compensation when it's needed most, whilst you are suffering not two years down the line.

For straightforward whiplash related injuries that heal within a few weeks or months compensation for your loss of earnings or medical costs will be much quicker. Sadly in some rare cases whiplash injuries can cause on going health problems for years. In these more unusual cases the claim would be for a settlement in excess of £10,000 but a good lawyer will be able to advise you about how to proceed with a claim such as this.