Most road traffic accident claims are won or lost on evidence that lawyers did not write. Collision reconstruction reports, vehicle damage assessments, engineers’ opinions on repair and value, medical reports on mechanism of injury. By the time a claim reaches a settlement meeting there can be four or five of them, often disagreeing.
The problem at a conventional settlement meeting
Negotiators on both sides are usually working from a summary of that evidence rather than the evidence itself. Each side’s expert has been instructed by that side. Nobody in the room can independently weigh what the reports actually establish, so the negotiation falls back on percentages and precedent: a liability split that feels about right, a credit hire figure that splits the difference.
That produces settlements, but not always good ones, and not always quickly.
What changes with a technically fluent mediator
I was a vehicle engineer for nearly three decades before I was a mediator: workshop floor, race team, crash-structures research. In the room, that means I can do three things that most mediators cannot.
Follow the reconstruction. Whether the damage, the momentum and the energy in the case are consistent with the account each side gives, and whether a manoeuvre described in a statement fits the physical evidence. I can ask each side, privately, where its expert’s reasoning is robust and where a trial judge would have questions.
Test the vehicle damage case. In credit hire and property damage claims the engineer’s report drives period, repair cost and pre-accident value. I understand how those figures are built and where they are soft.
Keep the engineering and medical evidence in the same conversation. The severity of an impact is an engineering quantity; whether it caused a particular injury is a medical one. Keeping both in view, and clear about which expert answers which question, helps the parties price risk realistically.
None of this is advice to either side. The mediator remains neutral and decides nothing. But a neutral who understands the evidence can ask sharper questions, and sharper questions move positions.
Mediation or facilitated JSM
For litigated injury claims the choice is usually between a mediation, with private sessions and a mediator carrying proposals, and a facilitated joint settlement meeting, a chaired without-prejudice meeting between representatives. The second suits claims that are close; the first suits claims where liability or causation is genuinely contested. Both are offered, and both benefit from a chair who can follow the technical argument.
The wider push towards settlement
Since the Court of Appeal’s decision in Churchill and the 2024 changes to the Civil Procedure Rules, courts can direct parties to engage in dispute resolution and penalise unreasonable refusals in costs. For insurers and claimant firms managing volumes of RTA claims, an early, well-run settlement day is no longer optional. It is the expected route.