If you’ve been in a car accident but feel fine afterward, don’t let your lack of apparent injuries fool you. Just because you don’t have broken bones or cuts doesn’t mean that you’re not truly hurt. It’s critical for car accident victims to see a doctor as soon as they can.

Car accidents are sadly common in Connecticut. It only takes one sleepy, inattentive driver to cause an accident that leaves you with piles of medical bills. Other common causes of car accidents include speeding, aggressive driving, poor weather, and car malfunctions.

Here is why you should see a doctor right away after an accident.

You Could Be More Injured Than You Realize

Immediately after an accident, you might feel perfectly fine, just a bit shaken up. If so, you probably consider yourself lucky. You’ve seen footage of car accidents on the news and know just how deadly they can be.

However, just because you feel fine on the day of the accident doesn’t mean you will tomorrow morning. The next day after your accident, you could wake up feeling sore from head to toe.

Whiplash is a very common injury after car and car accidents. If your head hit the windshield, you could have a concussion or traumatic brain injury. Such injuries might not start showing symptoms until days or weeks (sometimes months) after an accident.

Without treatment, these injuries can escalate until they’re much worse. For example, take a look at the symptoms of traumatic brain injuries that go untreated:

• Severe confusion
• Personality changes (turning bitter and angry when you used to be mild mannered, for instance)
• Seizures
• Headaches that won’t go away
• Coma

As you can see, you simply don’t want to leave things up to chance after a car accident. See a doctor right away so you can find out how badly hurt you really are.

Seeking Medical Attention Establishes a Paper Trail

After an accident, your phone will soon be ringing off the hook with calls from the driver’s insurance company. The adjuster will ask a lot of nosy questions to try and figure out what really happened.

What you tell the insurance adjuster has a huge effect on your settlement amount. If you don’t have documentation linking your car accident case with your injuries, it’s your word against the other driver’s.

That makes it easy for the insurance company to slash your settlement or even deny the claim altogether. The adjuster might say that you had those injuries before the accident or you hurt yourself after the wreck. They’ll possibly say that you didn’t see a doctor, so your injuries aren’t that bad. Without a paper trail of medical records, you can’t prove otherwise.

This is the second reason why seeking medical attention is so important: It’s tough for an insurance company to argue that you already had those injuries if you saw a doctor immediately after the accident. Plus, you’ll have a handy record of every penny spent on medical bills. The adjuster will take that into account when calculating your settlement.

Contact the Law Offices of James A. Welcome if You’ve Been in an Accident

If you’ve had a car or car accident, you could use the help of an experienced Connecticut car accident attorney from the Law Offices of James A. Welcome. For your free consultation, call (203) 753-7300.