[thematrixturtle]

Whiplash is also popular for insurance/disability fraud. There was an interesting story on HN a while back about how the prevalence of whiplash after accidents in the US is far higher than in Europe, for no other easily explainable reason, but I can't find the link now.

[aidenn0]

My mom rear ended a teenager at low spveeds. The teenager was fine with no neck issues, but after talking with their parents suddenly had whiplash.

She told the insurance company that the claim was probably fraudulent, and their response was "most whiplash claims are probably fraudulent, but it's cheaper to settle"

[Jare]

My wife was rear ended mildly by a truck years ago, and was initially ok other than the shock. Headaches and dizziness started after the next day and, including recovery with physiotherapy, lasted around 3 months.

That stuff is not a joke.

(more lighthearted note: after 3 months, her symptoms were mostly gone except for a new and intermittent nausea. The therapist was confounded for a few days, until he suggested the cause of that might be more related to me than the truck driver)

[techdmn]

I remember watching Jacques Villeneuve crash pretty hard in the 2000 Australian Gran Prix (tragically a loose wheel stuck and killed a marshal). I read an interview with him later, he said he ran back to the pits after the crash, but he couldn't even walk the next day. Adrenalin does funny things.

I dropped a motorcycle at the track a little over a year ago, and bounced off the tire wall in the process. Had a few bumps and bruises, but felt fine, until my back freaked out a month later. I got it sorted without too much trouble, but whiplash injuries do funny things.

[kube-system]

Having been in a couple significant (totaled vehicles) rear end accidents, neck pain does tend to show up a little bit after the accident.

I’ve never had it seriously enough that I’ve needed treatment, but I have had a minor kink in my neck that shows up later in the day. The kind of pain where it’s sore when you turn you head one very specific direction.

[sidewndr46]

Do you really think a teenager who was involved in possibly their first accident is really going to make an honest assessment of themselves? Although they make not be in shock, the sudden hit of adrenaline you get at that time can really does not make you capable of a self assessment.

Also in my last accident, it tooks months for the symptoms to become evident. When an EMT or doctor checks you out after an accident they are checking for life threatening injuries. Not saying "OK, despite the accident you are 100% the same! Go about life as normal!"

[renox]

I was once rear-ended the pain in neck started the day after, not immediately..

[usrusr]

I don't believe that it's just fraud: the claims aspect adds drama and the drama makes it objectively worse.

I'm going through wiplash myself right now (mostly gone) and I think that too much drama played a major role. In my case not because of any claims situation, but because having recently gone through an intracranial hemorrhage and because of having spent a year of my early career typing out neurosurgery reports from dictaphone. The result was that I wasn't sufficiently confident that it might be "just whiplash". Went on for months, with hardly any improvement, until a physiotherapist gave me a demonstration of just how capable those muscles are of creating the nastiest headaches. I'm quite convinced that this change to my mind was more important than the changed my neck muscles. I'd expect the drama created by the claims situation too have a similar effect as that alleviated hypochondrism I had, creating a link from claims to severity that isn't related to fraud at all. Fraud certainly exists, but its role might be much smaller that suggested by that link.

I remember that story from HN as well by the way, might actually have been a contributing factor in my disbelief/hypochondrism: "this pain is real, certainly not that thing that hardly exists outside of the American claims ecosystem". Beware of unexpected side-effects I guess.

(another factor in the difference USA vs rest of the world, entirely unrelated to claims, is likely the "unique" relationship with painkillers. Tho put it in perspective: I lost two trips to France to that injury that I had been looking forward to for months, but didn't take a single pill in the entire ordeal)

[dylan604]

Is whiplash something that shows up in some sort of scan that shows definitively yes/no that the patient has whiplash?

If not, then that makes sense why it would be so prevelant of a thing for the ambulance chasers to use

[smeej]

Sometimes the muscles are compensating for a new instability in the spine from the trauma, which can be seen, but only with a motion x-ray.

I had a motion x-ray done of my neck that finally demonstrated that my skull slips slightly side-to-side relative to my atlas (C1 vertebra). So what seemed like my muscles overreacting or just me complaining about psychogenic neck pain (or trying to scam the insurance company) was actually my muscular system making sure I don't suffer an internal decapitation.

If anyone's having trouble with the insurance company insisting nothing is wrong because the static x-rays look fine, I cannot recommend highly enough that you look into a motion x-ray. It's very possible that your spine is only fine when it isn't moving, and that's no way to live your life.

[bee_rider]

I believe it is mostly just pulled muscles in the neck, so pretty hard to diagnose with imaging or that sort of thing.

[Simon_O_Rourke]

I find that hard to believe, a friend of mine in Ireland touched a taxi at no more than 5mph, leaving no obvious damage on the taxi itself, but with the taxi driver rolling on the road and getting an ambulance to hospital. There's big time insurance fraud going on there apparently.

[Dah00n]

Maybe this anecdote just show how bad it is in the US then.

[bobthepanda]

I wonder if it’s because of intersection designs.

Traffic lights often result in rear-ends (they commonly increase after red light cam installation, though are still safer than the t-bones red light cameras reduce.) Roundabouts, which are more common in Europe, cause these much less, and since you have to slow down to enter one any sort of crashes in one tend to be at slower speeds.

[varjag]

In much of Europe roundabouts are quite uncommon. There's one thing that is ubiquitous in America but not in Europe though: 4-way stop intersections.