Lorry And HGV Accident Compensation Claims

By Stephen Kane. Last Updated 2nd June 2023. HGV and lorry trips are an essential part of the supply chain for the UK.  They ensure goods arrive where they’re needed and on time every day but if one hits you, it may mean you need to make a lorry & HGV accident compensation claim for any injuries or damage caused.

Advice.co.uk deal with personal injury claims that have happened anywhere in the UK and can provide no win no fee solicitors for any case we work on.

If you’d like to begin a claim today, please call on 0161 696 9685 and speak with one of our fully trained advisers.

If you’d rather find out more first, then please carry on reading this helpful guide.

Select A Section

  1. What Is A Lorry Or HGV Accident?
  2. Compensation For HGV Accident Injuries
  3. What Can LGV & HGV Accident Claims Include?
  4. Claims For Accidents Involving Foreign Lorry Drivers
  5. Liability For Lorry And HGV Accidents
  6. Road Traffic Accidents Claims – Lorry Accident Claims Time Limits
  7. How You Start A Lorry Or HGV Accident Claim
  8. Can I Claim For A Lorry Accident On A No Win No Fee Basis?
  9. Find Out More About Road Traffic Accidents

What Is A Lorry Or HGV Accident?

An accident involving a lorry or HGV can be terrifying because of the vast size of the vehicle.  Not all colisions with HGVs would be suitable for claiming compensation though. This is mainly the case if it was you that caused the accident rather than the lorry driver.

Lorry accident claims guide

Lorry accident claims guide

To be eligible to make a claim, the driver of the HGV needs to responsible for the accident in some way.  As a road user, any driver owes other road users a duty of care to drive carefully and minimise the risk of an accident. If the HGV driver fails in that duty of care, then compensation could be claimed by anybody hurt in an accident.

We’ll cover the types of accidents where the driver could be liable for the accident in another section of this guide.  If you think you’ve got a valid claim, because an HGV driver caused an accident you were involved in, then please call one of our team for further advice.

Compensation For HGV Accident Injuries

Our following sections look at how compensation in a personal injury claim can both be evaluated and awarded.

Any compensation you receive would be based on the injuries you sustained and how they affected you. If you are successful, you would receive compensation for your pain and suffering. This would be awarded under a head of claim known as general damages.

Injuries and car accidents can affect people in different ways so there are no set compensation figures for what you would receive. Instead, you could present evidence of the extent of your injuries, or personal testimony of your suffering to help determine your award.

We have used a document called the Judicial College Guidelines to provide the bracketed amounts below, as this document could be used by litigators to help value your claim.

InjuryDetailsCompensation amount
Neck Injury - Severe (ii) Disc damage and fractures in the cervical spine which cause a severe disability.£65,740 to £130,930
Neck Injury - Moderate (i)Dislocations or fractures which cause immediate severe symptoms and may require spinal fusion.£24,990 to £38,490
Leg Injury - (b) Severe (iii) SeriousSerious compound or comminuted fractures, or injuries to joints or ligaments resulting in instability with prolonged treatment. £39,200 to £54,830
Leg Injury - (c) Less Serious (i)Fractures from which an incomplete recovery is made. The person may be left with a limp.£17,960 to £27,760
Back Injury - Moderate (i)Could include compression/crush fractures of the lumbar vertebrae causing a risk of osteoarthritis and chronic pain£27,760 to £38,780
Back Injury - Minor (i)Soft tissue injuries with recovery expected within about two to five years.£7,890 to £12,510
Wrist injuries - (c)Wrist injury that causes persisting stiffness and pain.£12,590 to £24,500
Whiplash Injury with Psychological InjurySymptoms lasting 18-24 months£4,345
Whiplash InjurySymptoms lasting 18-24 months£4,215

We go into more detail about the other forms of compensation you could seek in the next section. However, you can reach out to one of our advisers for a direct and free compensation estimate or to make any other form of enquiry about the HGV accident procedure in the country.

What Can LGV & HGV Accident Claims Include?

Any personal injury solicitor has a number of ‘Heads of Loss’ or elements that they can use to build a claim. They use whichever losses are relevant, so not all are used in all cases. For your information, some of the more commonly used elements are:

Special Damages

This element of a claim is designed to ensure that, once settled, you are not financially worse off than you were prior to the accident. There are a number of special damages available, including:

Care Costs

If you require any form of professional care while you’re recovering from your injuries, you could claim the costs back.

Medical Costs

You may need to pay for a lot of prescriptions, depending on the severity of your injuries, or you may even have to pay for private medical treatment.  It is possible for these costs to be claimed back.

Travel Costs

Following your accident, if you have to make alternative travel arrangements such as using public transport instead of driving, you could submit a claim for any additional costs incurred.

Any Loss of Income

There may be lost income incurred if you have to take time off of work to recover or to attend doctors’ appointments.  If your employer only pays statutory sick pay (SSP), then you may lose out financially so it’s only right that you should claim these losses back.  You could also claim for future losses if the injuries are likely to impact on your employment in the future.

Damage to Personal Property

If you have any personal property damaged during a lorry accident, such as torn clothing or broken spectacles after banging your head, you can ask for the cost to replace or repair the damaged items.

You should contact us as soon as possible, following a lorry accident to check whether you’re likely to be able to claim any expense back, especially large value transactions like private medical care.

Claims For Accidents Involving Foreign Lorry Drivers

A large percentage of lorries on British roads are operated by European haulage firms and employ European drivers but while driving on British roads you’re protected in the same way as if a British lorry had hit you.

The process of claiming will be the same and you should make the same steps if you’re involved in an HGV accident involving a foreign driver.  That means you should get their name, address, licence plate number, telephone number and insurance details.

If the driver has no insurance details available or isn’t insured, you can still make a claim.  We can use the Motor Insurer Bureau when no insurance is present but you will need to provide the vehicle licence plate as evidence and it may be a good idea to get a crime reference number.

It can be straightforward to claim against a foreign HGV driver or it could be quite complex! Let us deal with the claim on your behalf as we have the experience and knowledge to make the claim process much easier.

Liability For Lorry And HGV Accidents

When you’re involved in a lorry accident, it may not be clear who is responsible and who the claim needs to be made against.  There are generally 3 options:

  • The haulage company would likely be responsible if they failed to maintain the lorry properly and this was the cause of the accident. They could also be responsible if they hadn’t advised the driver of any specific regulations that they should have been aware of.
  • The driver would be to blame, and therefore liable, for an accident if they caused the accident through negligence in some of the ways we’ve dealt with already in this guide. Namely, driving while tired, intoxicated, careless driving, speeding or other driver errors.
  • In some circumstances, both the haulage company and driver could be held responsible such as when the goods being transported fall from the vehicle on to your vehicle. Both the driver and the company employing them share responsibility for securing cargo properly within the vehicle.

To make things clearer as to who to claim against, we’d recommend you contact us and we’ll provide free legal advice about where the blame lies in your particular scenario.

Road Traffic Accidents Claims – Lorry Accident Claims Time Limits

All road traffic accidents claims must be started within a certain time limit. If the time limits are not adhered to, you could be time-barred from claiming accident compensation.

Typically, the time limit will either be:

  • 3 years from the date of your accident
  • 3 years from the date you became aware your injuries were caused by negligence

However, some exceptions can be made.

People under the age of 18, for example, cannot start a claim and are therefore not subject to the time limit. A litigation friend can be appointed to start a claim on their behalf before they can claim for themselves, but otherwise, their 3-year time limit will start on their 18th birthday.

People who lack the mental capacity to start a claim have their time limit indefinitely suspended. A litigation friend can also be appointed to represent them and manage their claim. If the claimant recovers, they would then face the usual 3 years.

If you have any questions about HGV or lorry accident claims, please reach out to one of our advisers.

How You Start A Lorry Or HGV Accident Claim

Simply pick up the phone and call us using the details at the end of this guide. Before you do though, there is some evidence you could gather which will make the claim easier to handle.  This includes:

  • If you visited a doctor following your accident to treat your injuries, ask for a copy of any medical records. We can use to support your claim and provide evidence of the injuries sustained.
  • Provide us with any photographs you took at the scene.
  • Let us have the driver’s details including contact details, company details, insurance details and number plate.
  • Ask any witnesses for their contact details and any witness statements they prepared at the time.
  • If the accident was reported to the police, and there was a reference number, please provide it or the officers details.
  • If you took photographs of your injuries following the accident, provide these as well.

All of these items can act as evidence to support your claim and could improve the chances of winning compensation greatly.

Can I Claim For A Lorry Accident On A No Win No Fee Basis?

If you are eligible to make a personal injury claim following a HGV crash, then you could seek support from a solicitor who has experience with road traffic accident claims. If you contact our advisors, they could review your case for you. If they determine you have a valid claim, they may then connect you with a solicitor on our panel.

A solicitor from our panel may offer to support your HGV accident claim on a No Win No Fee basis with a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA). Under this arrangement, you will not be required to pay any upfront or ongoing fees for their services. Furthermore, if your claim is unsuccessful, then you don’t need to pay your solicitor for the service they provided on your case.

If your claim is successful, then your solicitor will be paid a success fee. This is usually a small and legally capped percentage deducted from the compensation awarded to you.

To see if you could be eligible to work with a solicitor on our panel, you can contact our advisors. They can also offer you free advice for your potential claim.

HGV accident claim

HGV accident claim

If you’d like to begin a claim today, you can contact us by:

Find Out More About Road Traffic Accidents

That is the end of this guide, so we hope you’ve received all of the information you require to begin your own lorry & HGV accident compensation claim.  For your information, we’ve included further useful guides below:

Whiplash Information – a guide from the NHS about the symptoms and treatment of whiplash injuries.

Other Car Accident Claim Guides

If you require any more information to help you begin your claim, please get in touch.