The amount of compensation varies from case to case and no two cases are exactly alike. Awards made by the court or settled as part of the negotiations carried out by your solicitor will depend on the seriousness of your injury and the financial losses incurred.

Compensation for your injury also broadly known as a claim for general damages is awarded for your pain and suffering and any long term effects of the injury. That will be based on specialist medical evidence that your solicitor will obtain on your behalf. That evidence could be as simple as a general practitioners report in those cases where the injuries are relatively minor and short lived to orthopaedic reports, neurological reports and other specialist reports in the more serious cases, depending on the nature of the injury. Awards for injury will be based on previous cases decided by the courts and guidelines published from time to time.

The amount of compensation for the actual injury will also take into account any treatment you have had to have as a result of the accident, for example physiotherapy. If you have had an injury that has resulted in your having to have physical or indeed mental treatment such as cognitive behavioural therapy (for those people who suffer a phobia of driving after a road accident for example) then your claim for compensation may attract more than someone who has not been similarly affected.

The injury compensation will also be based on the length of time your injury is likely to take to recover. A medical specialist will be asked to give a prognosis and if he is able to do so, he will estimate how long it will take the injury to settle down. If he is unable to do so and the prognosis is uncertain then it is common to have a second medical report at a later stage to ascertain the end recovery period and the claim will be settled once that updated medical is received.

Other factors taken into account in compensation awards are age of the person injured, whether there is any pre-existing medical problem that might be causing the injury to be prolonged or indeed whether the accident has aggravated that problem. Gender is also relevant in cases of scarring fro example.

Accident compensation is also awarded for financial losses incurred as the result of an accident., also known as special damages. These will of course include any loss of earnings, any medical or travel expenses and any other outlay that you can prove has been reasonably incurred as a result of the accident. In the more serious cases, these can include alterations to the property and vehicles (such as the cost of an automatic if it can be shown that the injuries have caused the individual to have problems with a geared car).

On going care costs even those provided by the family can be claimed if the medical evidence supports it and it can be shown that you had to have assistance with household tasks even for a limited time.

It can be seen then that claims for compensation can involve many different distinct elements and it is therefore important that you seek the assistance of a specialist solicitor.