Virginia whiplash injury attorneys

Of all soft tissue injuries, whiplash is the most severe and potentially deadly. It is caused by a sudden distortion of the neck and the subsequent counter motion. For instance, a sudden, forceful blow from behind can cause your neck to jerk backward violently, then jerk forward just as violently. This results in strains and tears of the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and even bones of the neck.

Motor vehicle accidents are the most common cause of whiplash injuries, although they can also happen through contact sports, amusement park rides, assaults, horseback riding, and more.

Here are a few facts about whiplash that most people don’t know:

• Whiplash isn’t only caused by rear-end collisions. It can be caused by a collision coming from any direction, such as a T-bone accident.
• You don’t have to be traveling at a high speed to suffer a whiplash injury; you can be moving as slowly as 2.5 miles per hour, or even stopped.
• Whiplash is not always recognized immediately. It can take as long as 24 hours for symptoms to become apparent.
• Nearly 2 million Americans suffer whiplash injuries each year.
• Whiplash is the reason all American cars produced after 1969 are required to have headrests.
• Before the term “whiplash” was coined in 1928, this injury was called “railway spine” because it was common in people who had been in train accidents.
• 25 to 40 percent of whiplash injury victims never completely recover from their injuries.
• Whiplash can cause brain injury.
• Whiplash can result in death.
• Death from whiplash doesn’t always occur instantly. In one case, a man died from whiplash two months after he had suffered his injury.