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Car accidents can cause a wide range of physical and emotional injuries, from relatively minor scrapes and scratches to life-altering conditions.
Understand the most common types of car accident injuries, as well as the steps you can take to demand fair compensation after a collision someone else caused.
Head Injuries
Occupants can hit their head on the inside of the car’s passenger cabin, or flying objects and debris may strike occupants in the head. Common head injuries in car accidents include:
- Concussions
- Skull fractures
- Eye injuries
- Dental damage
- Inner ear damage
- Facial scarring
Car accident victims can also suffer more catastrophic traumatic brain injuries such as brain bleeding, hematomas, penetrating brain injuries, or diffuse axonal injuries.
Neck and Back Injuries
The force of a collision can cause a car occupant’s head, neck, and body to jerk violently, causing injuries like the following:
- Whiplash: An injury caused by microdamage to soft tissues and nerve damage that results in chronic pain, stiffness, or weakness in the head, neck, upper back, shoulders, and arms.
- Herniated spinal discs: An injury that occurs when the softer tissue inside a spinal disc breaks through the disc’s hard outer covering, putting pressure on nerve bundles exiting the spinal column and causing severe pain or weakness.
- Spinal cord injuries: Severe crashes can also partially or wholly sever the spinal cord, causing paralysis in the body below the location of the injury.
Chest Injuries
Car occupants can suffer chest injuries from hitting the steering wheel, dashboard, or seatbacks, or from safety equipment like seat belts or airbags designed to prevent fatal injuries. Typical forms of chest injuries suffered by car accident victims include:
- Muscle strains or bruising
- Broken ribs or sternum
- Damage to chest organs like the heart or lungs
Limb Injuries
Car accident victims can sustain physical trauma to their arms and legs, especially if they instinctively throw up their arms to brace for an impact. Alternately, their limbs can be crushed as the vehicle crumples in a collision. Injuries to extremities that can occur in a car accident include:
- Broken bones, including compound fractures (when the bone breaks through skin)
- Dislocated joints
- Severe lacerations and scarring
- Ligament sprains or tears
- Muscle/tendon strains or tears
- Crush injuries
- Traumatic amputation or limb loss due to catastrophic damage leading to gangrene/necrosis
Skin Injuries
Car accident victims can also sustain a range of skin injuries in a collision. A crash can result in severe lacerations due to flying shrapnel or because an occupant is ejected through the windshield. Someone ejected from a car in a crash may also suffer abrasion injuries, commonly called road rash, when they hit the ground.
In violent crashes, car accident victims can also suffer a more severe form of laceration called a degloving injury, in which the skin is torn away from underlying muscle and bone.
In instances where a vehicle catches fire after the accident, occupants can also suffer burn injuries if they become trapped in the vehicle.
Emotional/Psychological Injuries
A catastrophic car accident may also cause survivors to experience psychological or emotional injuries like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which may involve symptoms such as:
- anxiety,
- depression,
- flashbacks,
- or panic attacks.
Accident victims may also develop fears of riding in motor vehicles or going out in public due to worries about getting into another accident.
Contact a Car Accident Attorney Today to Seek Financial Compensation for Your Injuries
Have you been hurt in a car crash someone else caused? Then get the legal help you need to demand accountability for what you’ve suffered. Contact Joshua E. Palmer Law Firm today for a free, no-obligation consultation with an experienced car accident lawyer in Macon. We will discuss your options for pursuing compensation for your medical bills, long-term care costs, lost income, and pain and suffering.
