Next, "injury:" take an ortho and chiro or an internist and a dentist and ask them to define "injury" and you don't get the same answer. In the eyes of most MDs, you'll find an injury involves some subjective complaint of pain for which there is a corresponding objective cause. Unfortunately, in "low speed" collisions we find a subjective complaint of pain with very often little or no objective cause. Tests examining range of motion and the onset of pain when rotating or during a specific movement are not truly objective. A broken bone visible in an x-ray is objective. A misaligned vertebrae is dismissed in some medical circles as the result of trauma and is often diagnosed differently from one chiro to the next.
I have and will share with you in August my MRIs - taken 9 days after 29 crash tests done in one morning. As many as 125 doctors of all stripes have examined those now and while I am "pain free" I've been told I have disk damage in three different disk combinations and have also ben told I have the neck of an 18 year old...
Lastly defining vehicle "damage" is just as complex. Overlooked by too many on the insurance side is the difference between "static" and "dynamic" damage. Inherent on both sides of the coin is also a failing to understand the strengths and weaknesses of energy absorption schemes for bumpers, the effect of restitution and the differences and similarities between the effect of energy and momentum in collisions.
There is common (sense) ground out there. The extremists - who overlook the actual dynamics of "low speed" collisions - are just as bad, in my opinion, as those who would believe - based on little more than their faith in the patient's claim - that the average person can be routinely "injured" (even permanently) in a 2,3 even 6 mph delta-V (rear end) collision.
Rusty Haight
rustyhaight@worldnet.att.net
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