Motor vehicle collisions can inspire a cascade of consequences. The people involved have to disrupt their day to handle the aftermath of the collision. They not be able to drive their vehicle until after it receives repairs. In some cases, the vehicle may not be salvageable at all.
Those involved in major collisions often check themselves and their passengers for injuries immediately after the initial crash. They may then operate under the assumption that there are no injuries to handle.
What people fail to realize is that those involved in crashes can very easily overlook injuries that could change their lives forever. Unless a crash was a fender-bender that only caused minor cosmetic damage to the vehicles, seeing a doctor to either rule out injuries or diagnose them can be one of the most important steps that those involved can take.
Why do people overlook injuries?
There are a few simple explanations for why people with major injuries might not notice them at first. The first has to do with the body’s stress response. In a life-threatening scenario, like a car crash, the brain floods the body with certain chemicals.
Those chemicals help people get out of dangerous situations by helping them fight or flee. One of the ways the body achieves that is by covering up or numbing pain symptoms after a crash. In other words, people may not notice their injuries because of how their bodies try to cover up their symptoms initially.
There’s also the complication of delayed-onset symptoms to consider. It is relatively common for major injuries to take some time to produce painful symptoms. People with concussions, for example, may not have any symptoms at first. It could take several days or the growing pressure on their brain to become problematic enough to be easily detectable.
People can also have stable fractures and incomplete spinal cord injuries. Even internal bleeding in the chest or abdomen can be easy for people to overlook right after a crash occurs. They need a doctor to evaluate them for injury risk and conduct tests that confirm bleeding inside the chest or skull.
People who don’t see a doctor after a crash are at a disadvantage in two main ways. The first is that their conditions may continue to get worse without immediate medical intervention. The second concern is that they may have a harder time obtaining compensation later. The longer the gap between the initial injury and the diagnosis, the easier it may be to raise questions about the origins of an individual’s injury.
Seeing a doctor shortly after a car crash can improve someone’s chances of getting compensation and treatment to prevent their physical challenges from worsening. At the end of the days, people often need to make time to see a doctor to help diagnose or rule out the possibility of concerning medical issues.