If you’ve been involved in a car or truck accident, you may wonder why you’re hurting, even though your car wasn’t significantly damaged. The vehicle damage might have even been so slight that you could drive your car home, yet you were forced to seek a doctor’s care for the pain, and you find yourself unable to complete your daily activities in the same way you did before the crash.
Contrary to what you might assume (and what your car insurance carrier will likely assert), the seriousness of your injuries after a wreck isn’t always directly tied to the amount of damage your car sustained in the accident. While research on the effects of low-speed and low-damage crashes is difficult, since human models do not have the same recoil reactions as living people, the medical evidence shows that whiplash reactions can occur even at speeds as low as 25 mph. When you’re hit in the rear bumper, it may appear that little damage has come to the car. However, the bumper is not designed to protect a car’s occupants, only to prevent property damage. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s safety regulations state that car bumpers are “not a safety feature intended to prevent or mitigate serious injury severity to occupants in the passenger cars.”
Insurance companies routinely deny claims for bodily injury out of hand where property damage is low, going so far as to use dubious biomechanics experts who argue that passenger injury where a car is not seriously damaged isn’t possible. A skilled attorney will be able to discredit this testimony with superior scientific support into crash mechanics, as well as testimony from medical professionals on the victim’s mobility and health after the accident, as compared to before the accident.
If you have been in a New York car accident and believe you’re entitled to compensation for your medical expenses, contact the compassionate Hudson Valley personal injury lawyers at Basch & Keegan for a free consultation.