Car crashes can change faces and change lives

According to disfigurement charity Changing Faces, around 400,000 people living in the UK have some level of serious disfigurement to their face, hands or body. While cancers, assaults, burns and congenital conditions such as cleft palate syndrome account for many of these, car crashes are another major cause.

For many people, facial disfigurement will be hardest kind to live with. Our faces serve as the focal point for our names and characters, playing an invaluable role in our social interactions. Even the most minor scarring or change in basic facial physiognomy can cause a person to lose self-confidence and often lead to serious depression.

In fact, depression is thought to affect many of the one million people who suffer facial injuries in the UK each year. While only a minority of these will be classified as disfiguring, anyone who remembers the experience of living with ordinary adolescent acne should be able to imagine to some extent the predicament faced by the people who endure even minor facial scarring.

With more than 12% of this one million thought to be made up of young people and the correlation of youth and car accident risk well-established, it is easy to understand why so many of these facial injuries are caused by car crashes.

Unfortunately, aside from improving both general road safety and safety technology in cars, there is little that can be done to prevent this disturbing situation.

Dealing with the way we as a society as whole perceive facial injury and disfigurement however, is another matter.

Much can still be done to minimise the "reflexive recoil" still exhibited in many members of the public when confronted with facial disfigurement. Education and the encouragement of genuine empathy are vital to this, something which makes public information campaigns such as the one played out on the posterboards of London Underground in 2008 so vital to reducing stigma.

Another way is to boost the confidence and self-esteem of people with facial disfigurement themselves. Changing Faces seek to do this by helping enable people with disfigurement to:

1. Get realistic information about the treatment options available.

2. Learn how to manage other people's reactions in social situations of all kinds.

3. Get quality support from family, friends, an appropriate professional or support group.

Notions of gender play a role in the personal impact of disfigurement too. Although it should in no way trivialise the experience of men living with facial disfigurement, the primacy of socially imposed ideals of "feminine beauty" on many women's sense of self-esteem and social standing is often reflected in the compensation payouts for facially disfiguring personal injuries.

For example, the upper level of compensation for very severe facial scarring in women car crash victims tends to be around £15,000 higher than for that suffered by men. However, this gender-based disparity can often be mitigated by personal psychological factors.

YouClaim's UK-wide panel of personal injury lawyers
With panel firms working right across the UK, over the years YouClaim's no win, no fee lawyers have successfully represented the road accident compensation claims of thousands of people.

While our ultimate aim will always be securing the best possible outcome for the claimant, we seek to do this with an ethos of sensitivity, accessibility and expediency.

Our pricing structure is set-up to reflect with us. Win or lose, when making a road accident personal injury claim with us, you will never incur a single penny in costs or fees. In addition, in keeping with our belief that 100% of all compensation awards should go directly to the client, we never take a cut.

We also believe in accountability, which is why all our panel firms fall under the strict governorship of the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Making a compensation claim is a serious matter, so it is something that we never take lightly.

If you would like to discover more about our service, fill out an online claim form or have an internet chat with one of our legal advisors.

Alternatively, if you would like to speak with someone over the telephone about progressing your car crash claim, call us now on 0800 10 757 95.