Why You Should See a Doctor After a Crash Even If You 'Feel Fine'

Published August 31, 2010 · Injury Law Basics

The crash is over. You climbed out of the car, exchanged information, talked to the officer, and told everyone you were okay. You drove home, or a friend drove you. By the next morning your neck will not turn and you have a headache that will not quit. By the third day you are wondering whether it is worth going to the doctor at all, since you already told the police you were not hurt.

Go. Go today. Over 30 years of handling injury cases, and 19 years before that investigating crashes as a Dayton police officer, I have watched this exact sequence play out hundreds of times. The decision to "wait and see" is the single most common way an honest, seriously injured person damages both their recovery and their claim.

Why you did not feel it at the scene

Your body has an emergency response, and it works. In the minutes after a collision, adrenaline and other stress hormones flood your system. Heart rate climbs, blood flow shifts to the large muscles, and pain signals are suppressed. People walk on broken ankles. People with fractured vertebrae help push cars off the road. This is normal, and it is also why "I felt fine at the scene" means almost nothing medically.

The injuries that most often surface later include:

• Soft-tissue injuries to the neck and back. Muscle and ligament strains from a rear-end impact typically stiffen and swell over 24 to 72 hours.
• Disc injuries. A bulging or herniated disc can produce no pain at first, then radiating arm or leg pain, numbness, or weakness days later.
• Concussion and other brain injury. Headache, fogginess, sleep disturbance, irritability, and memory trouble often appear after the initial shock wears off. Many people do not connect them to the crash at all.
• Internal injuries. Abdominal pain that grows over hours can signal bleeding or organ damage that is dangerous to ignore.
• Fractures that were masked by swelling and adrenaline.

A physician who examines you the same day or the next can catch these problems while they are treatable and document them while they are fresh.

The medical reason comes first

I am a lawyer, not a doctor, so let me be clear about priorities. The first reason to be examined is your health. Untreated disc and brain injuries get worse. A person who tries to "tough out" a concussion by going back to work and staring at a screen generally recovers more slowly. A back injury that is rested and treated early often avoids surgery that becomes necessary later.

If you feel anything at all after a crash, or if the impact was significant even if you feel nothing, be evaluated. An emergency room, an urgent care, or your family doctor will do. What matters is that a trained professional examines you and writes down what they find.

The claim reason is almost as important

Now the part I see from the other side of the desk. Every insurance adjuster who evaluates a bodily-injury claim is looking for the same things in the medical records, and the first is the date of the first visit.

The "gap in treatment" argument

If the crash was on the 1st and your first doctor visit was on the 14th, the adjuster will argue that whatever was found on the 14th was not caused by the crash. Maybe you hurt yourself at work. Maybe you slept wrong. Maybe it is an old injury. The two-week gap is, in the adjuster's telling, proof that you were not really hurt. It is not proof of anything, but it is an argument, and it is one that a defense lawyer will make to a jury if the case goes that far.

A same-day or next-day visit closes that door. The record says: crash on the 1st, examined on the 1st, complaining of neck pain and headache. There is nothing to argue about.

"You told the officer you weren't hurt"

Crash reports have a box for injuries. If you told the officer you were fine, that box says so, and the adjuster will quote it to you. The answer is that you were in shock and the symptoms had not yet developed, which is medically true and well understood. But you will need the medical record from the following day to prove it. Without that record, the crash report becomes the only contemporaneous account of your condition, and it says "no injury."

The record is the proof

An injury claim is proven with medical records, not with your word. The first examination creates the baseline: what hurt, where, how badly, and what the doctor found. Every visit after that builds on it. When I send a demand to an insurer in a serious case, the medical records are the core of the package. A case with a clean, prompt, consistent record of treatment is worth more than the same injury with a ragged, late-starting record, every time.

What to do at the visit

A few practical suggestions:

• Tell the provider you were in a crash and describe the impact. Ask that it be noted.
• Describe every symptom, even the ones that seem minor. A headache you do not mention cannot show up in the record.
• Do not minimize. People who are used to working through pain tend to say "it's not that bad." Say what is true.
• Follow the instructions. If the doctor refers you for imaging, physical therapy, or a specialist, go. A referral you ignore becomes another gap.
• Keep going until you are released. Stopping treatment because you are busy, or because the bills are piling up, hands the adjuster the same gap argument in a different form.

If you are worried about the bills, that is a reason to call a lawyer, not a reason to skip the appointment. There are usually several sources of payment for crash-related medical care, including your own auto policy's medical-payments coverage and your health insurance, and sorting them out is part of what we do.

What this means for you

Ohio generally gives an injured person two years from the date of a crash to file suit under R.C. 2305.10. That sounds like plenty of time, and it lulls people into thinking the first few weeks do not matter. The opposite is true. The first few days after a crash create the record that the entire claim will rest on two years later. A prompt medical visit, honest reporting of symptoms, and consistent follow-up are the foundation. Everything a lawyer does afterward is built on it.

So if you were in a rear-end collision last week and you are reading this with a stiff neck, close the browser and make the appointment. Then call us.