Palm Coast Injury Law Blog

If you have been in a low speed "fender-bender" with minor or negligible damage to your car you might be wondering how that affects your potential injury claim.  Good question.  Most people (read jurors) intuitively think that the bigger the crash, the more likely it is someone got hurt, and the smaller the crash, the more likely it is no one got hurt.  Again, it is not the speed that causes injuries, but the sudden change of speed, either due to a sudden stop, or sudden acceleration.  That is called Delta V in scientific circles.

Living in the Daytona area, and having seen NASCAR races in person and on TV for years, I know that some accidents like the one which killed Dale Earnhardt did not look that "bad" while drivers in other NASCAR accidents which looked much worse walked away without injuries. 

There is a whole defense named after small accident crash cases. It is called the MIST defense.  MIST stands for Minimum Impact-Soft Tissue.  It was started about 20 years ago by Allstate Insurance to fight back against claims in low speed rear enders.  There are special biomechanical experts who claim to be able to predict at what speeds humans can be injured and below those speeds (usually 5-10 mph) there can never be an injury.

The problem with the MIST defense is that there is no scientific evidence using live persons to reliably predict the speed necessary to cause injuries.  Courts will not allow junk science and have fortunately refused to allow so called "experts" from polluting the trial with junk opinions. 

So, if you have a significant injury due to a low speed, low crash accident case, be heartened.  There is a legal right to recover for your injuries, despite folklore to the contrary.