A fit and active man who lost a leg in a hit-and-run crash where he was left for dead says he would be “a shadow of the person I was” if not for laws protecting victims of negligence. Rusty Brown had to have his leg amputated after a Jaguar driver lost control at over 100mph and smashed into his car on the A259 near Bognor in 2017. Rusty said he was in excruciating pain in the months after the crash due to an ill-fitting prosthetic leg – and would have been left like that for years if not for legally protected compensation.
Rusty shortly after the crash (Image: Handout) Rusty, 51, said immediately after the crash he was given an NHS prosthetic leg which was a “terrible” fit and left him “getting upset” due to the pain. He added: “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.
“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.” Rusty, 51, now running on his prosthetic leg (Image: Handout) Kevin Zhou, then 29, admitted to dangerous driving, failing to stop at the scene of a crash, failing to report a crash and failing to hand over information about the identity of the driver following the crash in August 2017. Rusty, then 45, required 40 hours of surgery and was in hospital for three weeks after the head-on cras.