The Body
The science of injury. What a crash, a fall, a blast, or a blow does to a person, cited to the medicine, and what that means for proving the case.
The Third Collision
Every crash is three collisions: the car against the object, the body against the car, and the organs against the body. The third one is the one no photograph shows, and it is the one that tears the aorta and shears the brain.
The Roll
Most crashes are one impact. A rollover is a dozen. Why the belt does less in a roll, why the roof and the window are where the injury comes from, and why a tall or loaded vehicle tips when a low one slides.
The Cage
A car in a crash gets a cage built for the purpose. A motorcycle does not, and the rider stands in for it. The biomechanics of a rider against a heavy truck: the crumple zone, the second impact, and the blind spot.
The Reaction
Two cars are closing in the dark and only one nervous system is still working. The pharmacology of impairment behind the wheel: why the sober driver brakes and the impaired driver never does.
The Lucid Interval
He walked away from the wreck and talked to the officer, and two hours later he was dead. The epidural bleed, the middle meningeal artery, and why the calm after a head injury can be the disease.
The Ear
The blast is over in a heartbeat, but the ringing never stops. Why noise and pressure kill the ear’s hair cells for good, why tinnitus and hearing loss are permanent, and why an injury no scan can show is still real.
The Trench
A cubic yard of soil outweighs a small car and a wall of it drops in seconds. How a trench kills, the OSHA rule written in advance, and the gross-negligence door through the comp bar.
The Grade Crossing
A car meeting a train is an aluminum can meeting a car. It cannot stop in under a mile and cannot steer. The physics, and the question of who guarded the crossing.
Current
Electricity burns from the inside out, so the skin lies about the damage, and the heart can fail hours later. How current and arc flash injure, and the law of working the lines.
Crush
A crush injury runs on two clocks, and the second is the deadly one. Traumatic asphyxia, crush syndrome, and why release from the weight can be the fatal moment.
The S-Curve
The neck bends into a shape it was never built to make, and that S, at the facet joints, is where the whiplash injury lives, often with a clean scan.
The Fixed Object
A tree, a pole, a bridge pillar does not move and does not give. Why a car that finds a narrow fixed object is so often the worst wreck of all.
Closing Speed
In a head-on, the two speeds add. Why a median crossover is so much worse than hitting a wall.
Thrown Clear
There is an old belief that being thrown from a car is a kind of luck. The physics say the opposite: the belt and the roof are what save you.
Rhythm
A trauma therapy has you follow a moving finger with your eyes. It often helps. Why it helps is the honest argument.
In the Game
The sense that you can still affect your own recovery is measurable, and the defense will try to use it both ways.
Fertilizer
A fertilizer that feeds a field can level a town. Why an ammonium nitrate blast injures in four ways, and the quiet one that kills.
The Clot
A broken leg can kill a month later, from a clot that formed while it healed. Why stillness is its own injury.
The Wrap and the Ground
A person struck by a car is not hit once. Why the last impact, the ground, is so often the one that kills.
The Second Hit
In a chain-reaction crash, the label hides the one thing that matters: which impact did the harm, and how you prove it.
Inches of Steel
The front of a car has three feet to save you. The door has three inches. Why the turn across traffic is so dangerous.
The Body at 13
A seatbelt was built for an adult body. Why the belt rides onto a child's abdomen, and what submarining does.
Fire
Sometimes the crash is survivable and the fire is not. Why a fuel-fed fire turns a survivable wreck fatal, and the standard meant to stop it.
Wired to Move
Why the hurt person says "I am fine" at the scene and wakes up unable to move. The crash-moment stress response, and the body's own painkillers.
Fog
A concussion can leave the scans clean and the person changed. The brain injury the standard imaging was never built to see.
Controlled Trauma
The surgery that fixes the injury is its own injury. The stress response, and the fog that can follow.
Looking, Not Seeing
Why a driver can stare straight at a parked truck and not see it in time. The perception science.
The Body at 84
The same crash a thirty-year-old walks away from can kill at eighty-four. The biomechanics of age.
Underride
Why hitting the back of a truck at a survivable speed can kill. The physics of the ride-height mismatch.
The Stop
A working muscle is a gland that writes to the brain. Take the movement away, and the mood follows on a schedule.