The experience of a man injured in a road traffic collision earlier this year has made me reflect on the experiences many of my clients have too. According to his wife who spoke with the BBC, Andrew Giles in Cambridgeshire was injured in a serious collision but they felt the police did very little to investigate.

I know many of my clients have minimal interactions with the police after they are involved in a collision, they find out witness statements weren't taken, drivers weren't interviewed and ultimately they are left with unanswered questions. For someone who has been through the trauma of a collision and perhaps cannot remember it because of a brain injury, this is a difficult thing to come to terms with.

It is important to bear in mind the police authorities have tight budgets and are not obliged to do a far-reaching investigation for every single collision. However, the investigations which are done can leave unanswered questions.

A personal injury compensation claim is an option for some people involved in road traffic collisions and it might answer some of those unanswered questions. As part of the initial investigations, the solicitor will usually obtain a copy of the collision report from the police, which the injured person might not have seen before. 

The solicitor might also get a copy of the transcript of an interview with the other driver, witness statements, photographs of the scene, dash-cam footage, CCTV footage and so on. All of this is likely to be new evidence unseen by the injured person. 

The solicitor might also make their own enquiries, for example, contacting witnesses the police didn't speak to, asking for copies of CCTV footage from cameras on shopfronts or homes and perhaps instructing an independent accident reconstruction expert.

In this way, the investigations undertaken by a specialist personal injury solicitor can help people on a very human level to understand what happened and gain some closure.