Nick's story.

It is now over three years since the crash colleagues and I had while making a film for the BBC in Ukraine. We were driving from Sumy to Kyiv when a tyre blew out, the car careered down the verge, flipped 3 or 4 times, and ended up hitting a tree (by my door). I was in a coma for 3 weeks, have permanent brain injury, and my life has been profoundly changed. At points it looked like the outcome might be considerably worse, and I have made what has been described as a remarkable recovery. Naturally I think a lot about the many tens of thousands of people who have been killed in the war I was there to cover.

A few weeks ago, with the help and support of the wonderful Helen Clifford - a brilliant lawyer specialising in accidents at work - we reached a 'settlement' with the BBC, as recognition of the impact the accident has had and will continue to have on my ability to work, and because they were responsible for hiring an unsafe vehicle for work in a high risk environment. It also transpired that, like all freelancers the BBC and many other media organisations send to war zones, I was not properly insured. And our driver - who did his level best to control the car in impossible circumstances - did not have the requisite license or training to drive a vehicle as heavy as our armoured SUV. I don't blame him for what happened, but clearly he should have had the specialist training to be able to control a vehicle of that weight in an incident like ours.

I am grateful to people at the BBC who have supported me, and I hope to continue working with them, I'm hugely grateful to many colleagues and friends who have been amazing, and of course to my family.

I am pleased that something of a line has been drawn, and that I can try to pick up where I left off on 5 June 2022. I've been told among other things that it's questionable whether I'll be able to function fully as I used to, which often involved performing multiple tasks simultaneously (filming, producing / directing, translating, keeping on top of fast-changing situations), in challenging and potentially dangerous environments. But I intend to do my best.

And I plan to help raise awareness among freelancers and others hired in the media, encouraging people to be better across the level of support and cover provided by their employers. And to urge employers such as the BBC, and many others, to provide full cover and support to people they send to work in war zones and elsewhere, as a matter of course - and to be upfront and transparent about what cover and support are in place before sending them off. It would be nice if that became a legal requirement.

It wasn’t just the settlement that Helen was brilliant on- it was making the BBC provide appropriate healthcare and specialists. She found some brilliant specialists and persuaded the BBC that was something they should be covering.