A CAR crash victim who lost her unborn daughter in a horrific smash is still waiting for a full financial settlement nearly three years after the accident.

Louise Norman suffered horrific internal injuries and severe wounds to her legs when her sister's car was hit head-on by a police van.

The 25-year-old was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with her first child.

Her sister Sam, now 27, who was driving, received serious leg and ankle injuries. Miraculously Sam's children, Alanna, two, and Charlotte, one, escaped with cuts and bruises.

The crash devastated their lives and Louise and her husband Damian have had to fight for compensation every step of the way.

Now Brighton Kemp Town MP Des Turner is taking on their battle.

He is calling on the Government to help car crash victims claim compensation and has presented a bill at the House of Commons setting out new measures to force insurance giants to pay out more quickly. Mr Turner said: "The system repairs bent metal quite well, but it does not give enough support to human beings. My bill is unlikely to become law, but I am hoping the Government will be pressurised into addressing this issue by doing something itself."

The accident happened om June 18, 1996 when a police transit van, driven by a civilian police driver who claimed he blacked out at the wheel, collided head-on with Sam's Volvo on the A27 near Lewes.

Louise and Damian, a former plumber, tried to come to terms with the loss of their child, but their despair was made worse by the seemingly endless battle for compensation with the firm who had insured the van driver.

The driver, Hugh Shaw, 65, from Bexhill, was jailed for 12 months, a sentence later slashed to three months, after he was found guilty of dangerous driving in May last year.

But his insurers, London-based Zurich Municipal, refused to compensate Louise, who came close to death herself after losing 18 pints of blood.

Louise and her husband took the firm to court in Brighton in January 1997 to make their claim for compensation.

Only when Shaw, who was also banned from the road for two years, was convicted did the firm offer its support.

Seven weeks after the trial they gave Louise and sister Sam £8,000 each.

Louise, of Bateman's Road, Woodingdean, Brighton, said: "When we were told Shaw was a police driver we knew we were going to have problems.

"We had to fight for everything. We decided to take them to court as we had not had a single penny from them.

"We had no co-operation at all, not from Zurich or from the police. Our trauma was made three times worse." Louise and Damian's finances were turned upside down after the crash.Louise, a reflexologist, said: "When you have a crash like that it's not just there and then that things go wrong. For two years after things were so hard. Problems just snowballed.

"I spoke with the Chief Constable Paul Whitehouse about it and he said 'this is not a them and us situation'. But that is exactly what it is.

"Insurance firms just do not seem to understand the requirements or circumstances like ours."

Damian, 25, now a self-employed taxi driver, added: "It would be so much easier if these firms offered regular payments while you are trying to rebuild your life, but they don't."

The couple, who have now received an undisclosed interim sum, are hoping to win another compensation payout soon.

David Forster, spokesman for Zurich Municipal, said: "We have a duty to policy holders not to throw their money away. It is a hard balancing act, which we sometimes get wrong."

"We never try to stop payments, but there are often claims which are not justifiable. I am not talking about fraud, but about claims which we do not accept."

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