Many people involved in car accidents in Illinois often ask, “Do I need to see a doctor after a car crash?” You should see a doctor if you get involved in a car accident, even when you feel fine. Doing that will enable your doctor to examine you, diagnose your injuries, and enroll you in the right treatment plan. The sooner you see a doctor and start treatment, the better your prognosis. Seeing a doctor soon after an accident also helps create documents to link your injuries to the accident. Those documents can also help support your auto insurance claim or lawsuit.
Something else you need to do after a car accident is to involve a car accident lawyer to protect your rights, communicate your best interests, and maximize your compensation. Seasoned car accident lawyers at Chute, O’Malley, Knobloch, and Turcy, LLC, are on standby to help you get justice and rightful compensation from the at-fault party. Call us at 312-775-0042 to request a free initial consultation.
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What Are the Most Common Injuries Sustained After a Car Crash?
Illinois ranks 8th among the top 10 states with the highest number of car accidents. The outcomes of motor vehicle accidents vary from mild to severe and, in worst-case scenarios, fatalities may occur. Some injuries from car accidents can be apparent immediately, like broken bones and cuts.
Other injuries can be latent and take weeks or months to become obvious. What’s more, some injuries manifest themselves psychologically, leaving no physical signs. The most common car accident injuries include:
Traumatic Brain Injuries
Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) are caused by impact to the head. In a motor vehicle accident, TBIs result from the head coming into violent contact with parts of the car or the road. A TBI will often leave a person with a permanent disability. It will also result in hefty health care bills, dependency, and a lowered quality of life.
Head, Neck, and Spinal Cord Injuries
Besides TBIs, accident victims can suffer other head injuries, like concussions. The impact of an accident can also cause neck and spinal injuries. Neck injuries can be mild and treatable using medication and neck braces, or they can be severe, affecting the spine.
Spinal cord injuries are serious, as the spine sends signals between the brain and the rest of the body. When the spine is injured, there are changes in feeling and movement, strength, and loss of bowel and bladder control. Spinal cord injuries also cause difficulty breathing and decline in sexual function and other body functions below the injury site. These physical effects almost always bring emotional, mental, and social side effects.
Broken or Fractured Bones
Broken bones and fractures are common in car crash victims. These injuries are often not as severe as TBIs and neck and spine injuries. They are, however, painful, and the victim will require some downtime to heal completely. In severe cases, injured parties with broken bones and fractures might have a limb so severely damaged that they require amputation.
Burns
Car crashes subject victims to burns and scalding, which can then cause disfigurement, scarring, and infections. Again, burns need to be properly managed for the best recovery outcomes. Still, these can leave victims scarred for life, which comes with its share of mental and emotional anguish.
Internal Injuries
Internal injuries constitute scenarios like internal bleeding. These injuries can’t be seen outwardly but are a ticking time bomb if not addressed promptly.
Emotional Injuries
While some people will get visible injuries or internal injuries from car accidents, there is another type of injury: emotional injuries. These cannot be seen outright or in imaging tests, as their effects are primarily psychological. The symptoms of emotional injuries include PTSD, depression, pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life.
Can You Experience Delayed Injury Symptoms After an Accident?
It’s not uncommon for people to feel okay after an accident, and if nothing is broken, swollen, or bleeding, there is an assumption that all is well. However, some injuries, like internal injuries, will not have outward signs immediately after the accident. But if you are bleeding internally, this will continue and will get increasingly worse for each day you are not getting treatment.
What Are the Benefits of Seeing a Doctor After a Car Crash in Illinois?
Whether you feel fine after an accident or think that your accident was minor, it’s wise to seek medical help. The benefits of seeing a doctor after a car crash in Illinois include:
Safeguarding Your Health
The human body is resilient, but not resilient enough to withstand the impact from the thousands of pounds of glass, hardened plastic, and metal that fly around in an accident. Your body has a way of protecting itself from trauma. It does this by releasing hormones to dull or numb pain temporarily. So, what feels like a slight bump or a sore spot immediately after the accident can swell up, discolor, and leave you in excruciating pain days or even weeks after the accident.
Having a medical professional in Illinois examine you can help identify soft tissue or skeletal damage that may cause pain or worsen over time, resulting in a long-term injury. The sooner you get on a treatment plan, the better your outcome.
Insurance Purposes
Insurers use several systems to determine the validity and value of your claim. One of the elements used to process your claim is whether you sought medical attention and how soon you did so.
You wait too long, and the insurer might argue that you got injured elsewhere. The insurer may use your delay in seeking medical attention to justify its decision to deny your claim or offer a fraction of what it should ideally pay as compensation. Similarly, this initial medical examination can form a basis for the insurer to cover the required follow-up care after the accident.
A reasonable time to get a medical checkup is 72 hours after the accident for most auto insurance companies. One of the most common mistakes after a car accident is waiting too long to get a medical checkup.
Support a Legal Claim
When your accident results from someone else’s actions, you might find yourself dealing with an unfamiliar insurance company when pursuing compensation. If you are wondering how to win a car accident case, a medical report is a good place to start.
Timely healthcare becomes useful because it shows you met the insurer’s stipulation of seeing a doctor within 72 hours. Additionally, timely medical treatment helps tie your injuries to the accident.
The second thing is that you will get examined and ideally get some diagnostic imaging tests done, treatment program designed, and medications prescribed. These will be followed by medical invoices that go towards quantifying your expenses for compensation.
Be sure to keep all your medical reports, invoices, and receipts. Also, keep a diary to document how you feel in the days and weeks after the accident. Your car accident lawyer will use these reports and documentation to build a case and seek compensation.
When to Hire a Car Accident Lawyer
When considering when to hire a car accident lawyer, you should, at the very least, speak to a car accident attorney soon after your crash.
There are multiple benefits to doing so. An attorney will review your case and advise whether you have grounds to sue. If you do, the attorney will begin his or her investigations and fact-finding to gather enough information to file a suit.
Using the facts of your accident, your receipts, medical records, and expert witness statements, the attorney can then compute how much you should get in compensation, file a lawsuit, and get into settlement negotiations with the insurer. Should your attorney feel you are getting lowballed or that the insurer is denying your claim wrongfully, the attorney will proceed to represent you at trial.
The time after an accident or the loss of a loved one through an accident can be draining financially, emotionally, and mentally. As such, it helps to have a qualified legal representative to help you navigate the legal processes that precede compensation.
A lawyer who will take your matter personally and accord your case the time and resources it requires can increase your odds of obtaining maximum compensation. You can count on Chute, O’Malley, Knobloch, and Turcy, LLC, for personalized and dedicated legal representation. Contact us if you or a loved one has been involved in an accident.