Many rear-end collisions are minor fender-benders that result in little to no vehicle damage and minor, if any, personal injury. However, some back-end accidents are much more severe. In many cases, the sudden, rapid, back-and-forth jolting of the neck during impact causes whiplash. When that occurs, tendons, bones, and muscles of the neck are put under extreme stress, resulting in multiple symptoms that can have lasting, long-term effects. If you are involved in a rear-end collision, you should contact a personal injury lawyer to understand your options for compensation. Note: If you are seriously hurt and need immediate medical assistance, always call 9-1-1 first.

Recognizing the Symptoms of Whiplash

When a rear-end vehicle collision occurs, whiplash symptoms can be intense and immediate. However, in some cases, the severity of symptoms is not immediately felt. Instead, they intensify over the course of hours or days. Frequently, those drivers or passengers rear-ended in a collision decline medical treatment at the scene, but later begin experiencing the full effects of whiplash.

Common symptoms of whiplash include:

If you haven’t already, you will likely be in a car accident at some point in your life. Studies have shown that the average driver will have at least one vehicle-related accident once every twenty years. This likelihood increases when the driver regularly engages in bad driving practices such as drunk driving, driving while tired, or while talking on the phone. The likelihood of a car accident also increases based on the age of the driver with teenage drivers having a significantly higher probability than adults. If, or when, you get into a car accident there are five tips you should keep in mind.

Assess the Situation

After you have been in an accident, remain aware of your environment. If you feel that you have been injured then stay in your vehicle. Remain inside until emergency services arrive. If the circumstances demand that you leave your car then do so slowly and careful while remaining aware of your surroundings. Move to a safe location and stay there.

Call the Emergency Services

If you can move then call 911 and alert the police and the emergency services that an accident has occurred. Once they’ve arrived be polite and cordial and work with the police in relaying what happened.

Driverless cars are the latest buzzword in the tech and car industries. This led the public to believe that soon the road would be filled with 100% autonomous self-driving cars. While many early adopters are excited at this prospect, many drivers are uneasy by this idea. It also creates interesting legal questions regarding who could be at fault for injury if an accident involving a driverless car occurs. Without a doubt, the driverless car could be the future, but it is unlikely that the first models will be entirely autonomous. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has organized the types of driverless cars into six stages based on their level of autonomy.

Stage 0: No Automation

At this stage, the car is entirely dependent on the driver and offers no self-driving features. In other words, most, vehicles on the road today fit into this stage.

Stage 1: Driver Assistance

This includes some features like steering and acceleration to assist the driver. However, at this stage of automation, the driver has to remain actively aware of road conditions. The driver must still keep their hands on the steering wheel and be ready to operate the pedal

Driving a large truck, such as a semi-truck, is a different experience than driving a small passenger vehicle. The drivers of a semi-truck are often hauling around thousands of pounds of cargo and traveling long distances. The truck drivers may also have to deal with any manner of mechanical failures on the truck, which is increased by the number of miles the trucks are driving. Accidents do happen, whether they be passenger vehicles or large trucks, and injuries or fatalities from large truck accidents are likely. The cause of large truck crashes was studied by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and some common causes were identified.

What Are the Causes?

The FMCSA was looking to determine why large trucks were involved in serious crashes. The total sample of the study was 963 crashes involving 1,123 large trucks and 959 vehicles that were not trucks. Out of those crashes, there were 249 fatalities and 1,654 injuries. 77 percent of the trucks included were single semi-trailer trucks and 5 percent were hauling hazardous materials. Crashes involving at least one other vehicle occurred in 73 percent of the crashes sampled.

The FMCSA study used two main definitions in their data. The critical event is the “action or event that put the vehicle or vehicles on a course that made the collision unavoidable” and the critical reason is the reason for that critical event. The critical events in the data the FMCSA observed were as follows:

Many drivers do not like driving near semi-trailer trucks and other large trucks. The sheer size of the vehicles make normal passenger vehicles feel minuscule in comparison, so it is understandable that many people would be nervous around them. The weight of a semi-trailer or large truck is much more than an average passenger vehicle as well. Weight affects a vehicle’s behavior in a number of ways, including less maneuverability, greater stopping time and distance, and more impact if something is struck by the truck. These factors all combine to make their involvement in automobile accidents something to be wary of when you are a driver because they can cause serious injury or death. Drivers can follow some simple best practices when around semi-trucks or other large vehicles to lessen the likelihood of involvement in a collision.

Keep Calm

Often when passenger vehicles drive around large trucks, they get frustrated about how long it takes trucks to accelerate and brake. It is important to keep in mind that large vehicles are not going to be able to accelerate or brake as fast as your vehicle when they can weigh 20-30 times what your vehicle does.

Wide Turns Will Happen

When driving around large trucks, keep in mind that they need to take a wider turn than your vehicle. The length of their vehicle does not allow them to make sharp turns, so they need to compensate for that length by swinging around, sometimes in other lanes. Watching out for any large trucks or buses that are swinging wide to turn will prevent an accidental collision.