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Even a minor fender bender is guaranteed to ruin your day, but a major car accident can have a long-term impact on your health, career, and ability to get around. These events can result in loss of limbs, blindness, paralysis, and many other serious injuries. They can also have devastating financial, professional, and social effects. Read on to discover six ways in which a car crash can change your life forever.
1. Debilitating and Disfiguring Injuries
Car accidents in which vehicles rollover can lead to severe crushing injuries. When crash forces and impacts are extraordinary, the victims are often left with traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Major car crashes have left people unable to walk, speak, see, or hear. There are also instances in which car crashes leave people with disfiguring marks. These can include severe burns, scarring, or radical changes to facial aesthetics and overall physical appearances.
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2. Inability to Perform Your Professional Duties
A debilitating injury could make it impossible for you to ever return to your career. For instance, if you’re a surgeon and suffer the loss of limbs or even nerve damage to your hands, you might never be able to perform the work for which you’ve so diligently studied and trained. Injuries affecting your eyesight, hearing, speech, and your cognitive abilities could leave you unable to work in your chosen profession or unable to work at all.
Even short-term injuries can have a long-term impact on the path or progression of your career. While you’re at home recovering from your car accident, you may miss out on an expected promotion or another important opportunity. From lost wages and missed chances to dramatically altered professional abilities, being in a car accident can change your professional life in a vast range of ways.
3. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Whether you walk away from your car crash completely injury-free or riddled with damages that take months to heal, you may find yourself suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These events can be emotionally jarring. Some people discover that they are no longer able to drive confidently. Others simply cannot get behind the wheel anymore.
PTSD after a car accident can cause:
- Panic attacks.
- Flashbacks.
- Hypervigilance.
- Insomnia.
If you believe that you might have any of the above symptoms, do not hesitate to contact a mental health specialist. There are various treatment options for PTSD, and not all of them involve medication.
4. Lost Relationships
After surviving a car accident, the last thing that you might expect to lose could be your marriage. Sadly, the divorce rate among couples in which one party is suffering from TBI is incredibly high. Traumatic brain injury often leads to:
- Aggression.
- Significant behavioral and personality changes.
- Prolonged bouts of anxiety and depression.
- Loss of confidence.
Even when people are not diagnosed with TBI after their car accidents, their relationships can still suffer. The financial stress of mounting medical bills, lost wages, an inability to work, and other damages can strain a marriage. Accident victims are always encouraged to consult with a lawyer as soon as possible.
5. Chronic and Severe Pain
Even if you don’t lose a limb in an accident, become paralyzed, or sustain a TBI, you can still end up with injuries that affect you throughout the remainder of your life. Crushed bones, slipped and ruptured discs, nerve compression, and other injuries can lead to severe and recurring pain that may prove difficult to treat.
Some accident victims maintain ongoing reliance upon prescription pain medications, and some require physical therapy that lasts for several years. Although a person with broken bones after an accident may eventually walk again, this same individual could need a cane, or they might always walk with a limp.
6. The Loss of a Loved One
The most devastating car accidents are those that result in loss of life. Even if you survive a car crash, one or more passengers may not make it out alive. Losses like these can take a lifetime to overcome. Some people never fully get over them. Whether you’ve lost a spouse, a child, a friend, or a relative as the result of an auto accident, you can experience anxiety, depression, PTSD, and severe emotional trauma for many years to come.
7. Loss of Independence
While this is a pretty big change, especially for avid drivers, it is, hopefully, only a short-term change. Depending on how damaged your car got, you need to wait until mechanics fix it or until you buy a new one. Either way, there will be a period during which you will have to give up on your independence in moving around. You could consider asking your friends for a lift or use public transportation to get where they need.
Or if you are lucky enough that your car escaped the crash without a scratch, then this point is of no concern to you.
8. Financial Impact
A car accident can take quite a toll on your finances on multiple levels. A lot of money can go toward covering medical bills and treatment. Add to this lost wages and potentially lower future earnings on account of any permanent disability. Do not forget about the mechanic’s bill for fixing your car or the price you have to pay for a new vehicle if the old one is beyond repair.
However, there is a way to ease the financial burden brought on by a car accident. A qualified lawyer can help you get generous monetary compensation for the troubles that you have experienced.
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Seek Compensation
Although some car crashes are relatively minor and easy to get over, others are downright life-altering. When injuries are severe, they can present challenges that last for years or even decades. In these cases, seeking compensation can help offset some of the resulting stress and financial hardship. It can also provide the financial resources that people require for getting essential treatments, therapies, and other forms of ongoing support and care.
