Cincinnati Car Accident Injury Lawyers: Automobile Damage and Your Claim

The extent of the property damage in an accident or crash often has significant impacts upon one’s injury claim. It is important to keep this in mind so that you understand how Cincinnati insurance companies evaluate claims.

There is No Solid Correlation Between Property Damage and Injury

We have all heard about stories where a person is involved in a traumatic, high speed accident and yet somehow walks away “without a scratch on them.” Well, the inverse can often be true as well. That is, persons can be significantly injured in accidents occurring at low speeds and/or with minimal property damage. Physics and human anatomy play a major role in explaining why this is the case.

Cars are Powerful and Human Beings Cannot Compete With That Power

Take a low-impact rear-end accident, for example. As the automobile is pushed forward, the head lags behind. As the head attempts to catch up, flexion results. According to research, this flexion results in 2 to 2.5 times the G Force or acceleration of the vehicle itself. In these acceleration injuries, the force applied to the neck is roughly equivalent to the weight of the head multiplied by the speed that the head is moving. Thus, a 5G force results in a potential loading of approximately 50 pounds to the head. One research group found that at 7.25 mph, a vehicle peak acceleration was 3.1 G, while the occupant’s head accelerated at a force of 8.3 G, resulting in an 83-pound force acting on the head. Would you volunteer to be rear-ended at 10mph? How much property damage do you think would be caused in a 10mph hit?

Insurance Companies Regularly Look to Property Damage to Evaluate Claims

Insurance companies often argue that if there is minimal property damage there must be minimal, or no, injury in an auto accident case. While there is no scientific basis to this argument, they continue to make this argument nonetheless. What they bank on is the belief that jury members would not believe that someone in a minimal property damage case was significantly injured. Admittedly, people are often skeptical when they see, for example, photos of a dent or a scratch on a bumper and an allegation of significant injury. However, when they start to understand the physics involved in a car wreck, it is quite simple to understand that property damage and injury often do not go hand in hand.

McKenzie & Snyder represents auto accident victims in the Greater Cincinnati area, including Colerain, College Hill, Northside, Arlington Heights, Finneytown, Forest Park, Hamilton, Monroe, Middletown, Batavia, Amelia, Oxford, West Chester, Mt. Healthy and more.

Written by Andrew Tobergte