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Can your neck be injured in a car crash with a low impact? Most defense attorneys and insurance companies would have you believe that it’s impossible. They make many arguments to jurors that it’s impossible and that these are just preexisting injuries. But, they are wrong!! Don’t be fooled!

There are two examples I can give that will illustrate the force applied even at low speeds: 1) would you put your hand on the back of a stopped vehicle and let another car roll into your hand at 5 miles per hour? Of course not. It would crush your hand. 2) Have you ever played with the ball pendulum game (commonly called kinetic balls or Newton’s Cradle)? This game demonstrate newton’s third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When one ball is pulled back and strikes the next ball, the force is great enough to travel through the three others and kick the last one up.

When your car is hit from the rear, the force travels through the car, jerks your body, and typically, your head snaps back and then forward. This force can trigger symptoms that were not present prior to the impact. It can also cause damage. This is commonly referred to as whiplash, but that term has been used so critically that it is better to use the proper medical terminology of "cervical strain", "bulging disk", or "herniated disk", depending on what your condition is. If you were already susceptible to an injury due to degeneration in your neck, this force causes the symptoms to present themselves through pain and, sometimes, through numbness and tingling.

Do you have an experience where you were involved in a low impact car crash and experienced significant pain and injury to your neck? Did the insurance company or defense attorney argue such a condition couldn’t result from such a low impact? Did they make you feel awful – like you were lying? Let us know. We want to hear your story. The more people who talk about the possibilities show how real they are. Please give us your comments even if they are contrary to the above (maybe you were involved in a low impact car crash and had no pain). We want to know.

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