Survivor of a 100mph crash who was left for dead by a speeding motorist backs campaign to protect compensation
A fit and active man who had to have his leg amputated after being left for dead by a speeding hit-and-run driver is backing a campaign to protect the law on compensation for injury victims.
Star Wars mega-fan Rusty Brown suffered life-changing injuries in 2017 when a Jaguar driver lost control at 106mph and smashed into his car on the A259 in West Sussex. Rusty had been driving home from work at Merali Pharmacy in Queen Street at the time.
As previously reported by The News, the Portsea pharmacy manager was hit head-on by ‘arrogant’ driver Kevin Zhou in a Jaguar 4x4. Zhou was later jailed for three years.
Rusty, now 51, had his right leg amputated after the head-on crash. Now he is working with national not-for-profit group APIL as part of the Rebuilding Shattered Lives campaign. He is the subject of a new short film called Rusty’s Story, in which he talks candidly about the challenges he has faced and overcome.
He tells how the NHS prosthetic leg he was given initially was simply not suitable for him. “I couldn’t walk further than a couple of minutes. The pain was excruciating. The fit was terrible,” said Rusty. “I was getting despondent. I was getting upset.”
To add to this, the other driver’s insurance company originally suggested that it was not responsible for paying compensation to Rusty.
“For the first year it made things very, very difficult. There was then the danger that actually, I wasn’t going to get any compensation”, he reveals in the film.
But thankfully, Rusty was able to secure an ‘interim payment’ to help him until his legal claim for compensation settled in full, which took three years. The payment was vital as it meant he could get private treatment and a suitable prosthetic leg. Rusty was also forced to move house as he could not get around in his wheelchair in his terraced house with its steep narrow stairs and corridors.
The interim payment helped him move to a house in Bognor Regis which was much safer to move around in, so he could do basic things for himself, like get bathed and showered on his own. He says that without the law on redress for victims of negligence, he would be a “shadow of the person I was”.
Kim Harrison, president of APIL, said: “If there’s one thing we want people to take away from Rusty’s Story, it is that compensation is not a windfall.
“The money cannot undo what happened but it is crucial to helping injured people like Rusty get their lives as close as possible to how they were before the negligence. The law on injury claims should be valued and protected, which is what the Rebuilding Shattered Lives campaign is all about. The needs of injured victims must be at the heart of any debate about the law on personal injury.”
Today, Rusty is back at work helping to run a pharmacy and has returned to his active lifestyle, which includes taking walking holidays with his partner Jacqui. Four years after his crash, in 2021, Rusty climbed Ben Nevis.
“I feel very thankful that I have recovered well, have had excellent rehabilitation and prosthetics provision, that my legal case has been settled in a very satisfactory way, and my life is very much on track,” he said.
For more details on the campaign visit: https://rebuilding-shattered-lives.org.uk/