Car Accidents Where There Is Little Or No Vehicle Damage

Dec. 10, 2009 - PRLog -- When there is an accident that produces little to no vehicular damage there are often questions and misunderstandings.  The purpose of this article is to present the science on no vehicle damage car accidents.

Let us review a study titled "Risk factors for long term treatment of whiplash injury in Japan: Analysis of 400 cases" by Hijioka, et al. (1) This is an important study in light of the popular misconception that holds that in a Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA), one can roughly gauge the likelihood of injury and its severity on the basis of property damage to the crashed vehicles. The authors in this study looked at 400 cases from the database of a Japanese insurer.  Most patients were injured in rear impact crashes.  The study provides us with answers to two important questions:

1   Does crash severity – as gauged by the degree of structural property damage to the subject’s car – correlate with the risk for injury?
2   Does this degree of crash severity correlate with duration of care, which can be grossly considered a gauge of the severity of the injury?

They classified vehicle property damage on the basis of six grades:

Degree of Property Damage

Grade 0      No damage
Grade 1      Slight damage
Grade 2       Damage to bumper
Grade 3      1/3 of car damage/trunk damage
Grade 4      ½ of car damaged
Grade 5      Total destruction of car

Although this grading scheme is not described in detail, the type of damage described by Grade 1 most likely represents cosmetic damage, such as scuff marks, paint transfers, scratched paint, broken trim pieces or taillight lenses, etc.  These types of crashes are often characterized as “no (structural) damage” in the U.S.  Thus, the first two grades are likely synonymous with “no damage” crashes from a structural standpoint.

When the authors break down the 400 cases on the basis of damage alone,  a substantial portion of them were injured in the Grade 0 & Grade 1 categories: an interesting fact in light of the prevalent misconception that injuries are unlikely when there is no property damage.

In fact, were this theory true, we would expect few injuries in the first two categories and we would also expect a more or less linear relationship of increasing numbers of members in the greater severity groups (i.e., the slope of the line would be positive).  Instead, we see a negative slope.  As damage increases, there are fewer members of the group.  

Thus, this study offers very compelling evidence that the “no damage – no injury” notion cannot be supported.

This article is based on an article written by Arthur Croft, DC, MS, MPH, FACO entitled
Can You Gauge Injury Risk or Severity From the Amount of
Vehicular Property Damage in Motor Vehicle Crashes?
Which appeared in Dynamic Chiropractic – December 16, 2002, Vol. 20, Issue 26


(1)   Hijioka A, Nawusawa K, Nakamura T.  Risk factors for long term treatment of whiplash injury in Japan: Analysis of 400 cases.  Arch Orthop Trauma Surg 2001; 121:490-493.


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