Who’s the dummy?
TV host injured after agreeing to be in a ‘human crash test’ sues BBC for £3.7m
A TV presenter who was injured while acting as a human crash test dummy on a science show is suing the BBC for £3.7million.
Jem Stansfield claims he lost his ‘stellar’ career as a result of whiplash, brain damage and psychological scars.
He had agreed to be strapped into a cart which was catapulted along a track into a lamppost for the stunt, designed to mimic the impact of a car crash.
He admitted being ‘a little nervous’ beforehand but said on the Bang Goes The Theory episode: ‘Tests make me confident that
I will walk away, but what we don’t know is how my body will behave.’
The presenter’s head is shown jerking backwards and forwards before he tells the camera: ‘There’s definitely an impact.’
Lawyers for Mr Stansfield, 46, claimed in the High Court he was left with ‘soft tissue injury to the structures around the spine’ as well as a ‘subtle brain injury’. Other alleged effects of the stunt in 2014 include dizziness and possible damage to his blood vessels.
The damages claim is mainly based on lost earnings which Mr Stansfield claims could have been at the level of Grand Tour hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond.
The BBC has agreed to pay Mr Stansfield two-thirds of his claim after a discount for his own ‘contributory negligence’.
But it is vigorously disputing the impact and degree of his injuries and how much he is due in compensation.
Mr Stansfield has a degree in aeronautics from Bristol University and is known for inventions including boots that
‘Went into a cycle of decline’
walk on water and vaccumcleaner powered ‘Spider-Man’ gloves which enabled him to climb 30ft up a brick wall.
Before Bang Goes The Theory, he was a ballistics and engineering expert for Channel 4’s Scrapheap Challenge.
In a brief pre-trial hearing this week, his barrister Marcus Grant told judge Victoria McCloud the presenter ‘struggled to fight on after the accident and then went off work and into a cycle of decline’.
Jonathan Watt-Pringle QC said the BBC contests Mr Stansfield’s case and ‘requires him to prove that the unusual array of symptoms of which he complains arose from... injuries in the crash tests’.
The case will return to court for a full trial of the damages claim at a later date.