What Happens to Your Body In a Car Accident?
During a car accident, your body may be thrown in different directions while each body part moves at a different speed and absorbs force unevenly. Muscles, bones, organs, the brain, and the spine can be affected even if symptoms are not obvious at first. Some injuries present immediately, while others become noticeable over hours or days.
If you’ve been injured in an accident, call our car crash attorneys in Peachtree Corners for a free case evaluation today,
What Happens to Your Body at the Moment of Impact?
A crash causes the vehicle to stop abruptly, but your body continues moving until stopped by a seat belt, airbag, dashboard, steering wheel, door, or other surfaces. The force of sudden deceleration or being propelled can strain or injure many areas. Speed, crash angle, point of impact, use of restraints, seat position, and deployment of airbags influence both the direction and degree of force but do not always predict the severity of injury.
What Happens to Your Neck and Back in a Crash?
Sudden movement can overextend or compress the neck and spine. Whiplash, muscle strains, bulging or herniated discs, vertebral fractures, nerve injuries, and even spinal cord injuries are possible. Back-and-forth or twisting motion frequently results in symptoms such as pain, stiffness, loss of motion, numbness, tingling, or pain radiating to the limbs.
What Happens to Your Head and Brain?
The skull may contact the inside of the vehicle, like the window or steering wheel. Just the rapid movement of the crash can cause the brain to move around inside the skull hard enough to cause a brain injury. Concussion, traumatic brain injury, skull fractures, and bleeding or swelling in the brain can result.
Headache, dizziness, nausea, memory problems, confusion, balance changes, and sensitivity to light are possible signs. The fact that you did not lose consciousness does not mean you haven’t suffered a head or brain injury.
Can a Car Accident Injure Your Internal Organs?
A strong impact or compression may injure organs such as the liver, spleen, kidneys, lungs, or intestines and cause internal bleeding without external marks. Symptoms like increasingly severe abdominal pain, swelling, dizziness, unexplained weakness, shortness of breath, or unusual bruising are signs that you should seek medical attention as soon as possible.
What Happens to Your Arms, Legs, and Joints?
Limbs may hit vehicle surfaces or become caught in between parts of the vehicle. This can result in fractured bones, dislocated joints, cuts, bruising, torn ligaments, nerve injuries, or other trauma. Drivers sometimes experience injuries to hands, wrists, or forearms from bracing against the steering wheel by reflex.
What Injuries Can Seat Belts and Airbags Cause?
Seat belts and airbags are designed to save lives but can cause their own injuries. Seatbelts could cause bruising across the torso, shoulder, rib, or abdominal injuries with severe impact. Airbags can cause facial abrasions, burns, skin irritation, arm and hand injuries, eye injuries, or chest bruises.
What Does Adrenaline Do After a Car Accident?
The body’s stress response releases hormones such as adrenaline that can temporarily heighten alertness, block pain, or cause shaking. As a result, you might feel little discomfort at the scene then notice injuries later, but the absence of symptoms does not mean you are not injured.
If you’ve been involved in an accident that you think was caused by someone else’s negligence and you’re experiencing injuries, it’s always worth scheduling a free consultation with a car accident lawyer to figure out what to do next. Call Bridger Law Group today at (404) 482-3330 and schedule your case evaluation.
