I met with some other chiropractors a while ago, and shockingly I heard a common trend. I also sadly hear from the general public: “I don’t see why I have to wear a seatbelt. It’s my choice, and I’m only hurting myself if I get in a car accident.” The only reason I think people can find this comment believable is because they don’t know why having seat belts also protects others.
The greatest risk of death occurs when heavy objects move around in a vehicle during a car accident. If an unrestrained occupant of a vehicle is flying around, they can be moving at high enough speeds to be ejected from their car. In my studies as an Auto Accident Specialist, I saw a video of a driver ejected from the rear passenger side window. If there were other people in the car, he would have crushed them before flying out of his vehicle. Now maybe you’re the only person in your car. Well that’s okay then right? Unless you’re ejected from the car towards another vehicle. A projectile entering a car during a crash yields an almost 90% risk of death to those in the car.
What is Whiplash?
So let’s talk the downside of seat belts. While they save lives, they do cause whiplash. Lots and lots of whiplash. During whiplash, which is most common when you are hit by a car from behind, your head moves back and forth 3 times within .600 of a second. Even at low impact speeds this may be 13 g’s of force to your head as it whips against your anchored (by a seat belt, because we’re going to do better now right?) body. So it isn’t a 10 pound head whipping around. At 13 g’s, it’s a 130 lb head whipping around.
Chronic Pain from Whiplash
That means those ligaments of the neck can become easily overstretched, injured, and unstable as they aren’t built to withstand these shear forces (back to front sliding forces). This may result in neck pain, which is pretty obvious, or even an alteration in your long-term neck biomechanics, or natural movement. That can lead to chronic neck pain.
Chiropractic for Whiplash
So what kind of seat belt is best? As far as safety, physics tells us the more we can disperse the forces acting upon us, the less injured we might be, so more is better in this case. As an example, look at the 9 point harness of a NASCAR driver. Even their helmet is strapped into the seat to avoid whiplash. They become the car, even so much that the forces of an accident almost pass by them, as opposed to us in our seat belts. We get almost every little bit of the force in a lower speed accident. I say low speed because cars are built to withstand certain amounts to save on car damages which is traded to forces and injury to us instead. If you do have the unfortunate occurrence of an auto accident, chiropractic care might be important if you do suffer from whiplash or any other injury.
Children typically use a 5-point harness. Why does this change later in life? I think it’s mostly for convenience. We’ve traded injury risk for convenience. It is easier to get in and out of your car when you have one small buckle to undo. The research says children are just as safe in a 5-point harness as a normal seat belts 3-point harness. But they are talking about safety from death, not injury. Their ligaments are more lax than ours, and they don’t complain as much as adults do. They also have more space around their nerve endings so things don’t hurt as much as adults, even when the damage is there. So get your children checked by a specialist after an accident.
The bottom line here is, seat belts save lives. They set up the body to get whiplash, but that’s better than the alternative really. Because we can usually get your body to heal itself best by setting up the right conditions and retraining the body after the mess caused by whiplash. If whiplash doesn’t get treated, by the way, I can’t begin to number the patients who come in 10 years after a car accident with continued chronic neck pain and headaches because they never received the right treatment as they thought it would go away. So, the sooner the better. At least get checked.
Take time to take care.
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