Throughout the years, I would give patients different hints on what to do as far as activities of daily living. These are helpful hints regarding anything, from how to lift to using heat and ice, to just anything regarding everyday activities.
The next thing I want to go over is a very important thing, and that is what you do if you know you’re going to get involved in an accident. For example, let’s say you’re sitting at a traffic light, you’re waiting for the light to turn, but you look in your rearview mirror and you see that somebody is coming at you and they have no idea that the light it red. You’re sitting there and you know that you’re going to get rear ended. Well what do you do?
What you do is you have to prepare for the impact. The very first thing that you need to do is make sure your foot is on the brake. If you don’t have your foot on the brake and you allow that person to hit you without your foot being on the brake, what can happen is you can be catapulted into the car in front of you. Or say, for example, you’re the first car at the intersection; you can be catapulted into the intersection and other cars can hit you from the side. So you need to make sure that your foot is firmly on the brake.
Now the next thing that you need to make sure of - and this is very, very important - is to make sure that the headrest is at head level. Then what you can do is you put your head back and brace against the headrest with your head. That helps to prevent that whip-like action of your neck from the impact, which is where you get a lot of your injury.
The third thing that you need to make sure that you’re doing during the impact, is to make sure your hands are firmly up against the steering wheel. Be mindful of the fact that if you grab them and hold on like that, you run the risk of injuring your wrist, breaking your thumb, or if you lock them, you could actually break your elbow. So firmly against the steering wheel, and don’t lock. Just press against it, press your head up against the headrest, and keep your foot on the brake. That will help to minimize your injuries from a read end collision, if you know that you’re going to be hit.
Dr. Charles Copeland is a chiropractor in Louisville, Kentucky. This blog includes information about chiropractic and helpful tips to prevent injuries, improve posture, and alleviate back pain and headaches. This website does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment (for additional information).