Mary Asks:

I have a couple questions. My young adult characters (a total of six— four of them intoxicated) were involved in a car accident. The two sober ones were in the first vehicle. My plan was to have the driver suffer from a broken wrist, maybe a bump on the head, nothing too serious (this can change if it needs to). If he is that okay would it be unrealistic to have his passenger hit her head hard enough to lose consciousness and suffer memory loss when she wakes up? I was thinking of including pretty severe amnesia, but as for the other four characters, would their level of intoxication let them walk away with little to no injuries, or would they still arrive in the ER with at least the unconscious passenger?

Jordyn Says:

There are so many variables in car accidents that you could basically do whatever you wanted, but I’ll give you some guidelines.

If you want the injuries to be less severe, I would not have a very serious car accident. For instance, your two sober characters in the first car should not be traveling probably over 45mph. Are there air bags in the car? Did they deploy? Typically they’ll deploy in a front end collision. Now air bags are not like soft little pillows when they inflate so facial injuries are not uncommon with air bag deployment so your driver breaking his wrist (if he were bracing the steering wheel in anticipation of the accident upon impact) with a bump on his head would be reasonable if he were seat belted into the car.

The sober passenger— I’ve never really seen “pretty severe amnesia” in head injuries unless the brain injury was very significant (like brain swelling, bleeding requiring intubation, medical coma, etc). This could be achieved if this passenger was not wearing a seat belt and maybe came up over the top of the air bag into the windshield. Or, for some reason, the air bag failed to deploy and they hit the dash board or they’re driving an older car without air bags.

Generally people with amnesia related to a “simple” concussion will remember what happened to them in a few hours— generally after sleeping so everything can “reset” itself. Most often, in the ER, we observe them until they are at their “neurological baseline” which means they basically have to be the same way they were before the accident as far as knowing who they are, where they are, and what time it is, and somewhat remember what happened. Also, their physical symptoms will have to be improved (little to no headache, no repetitive vomiting or nausea, good motor function, and can walk with little to no dizziness).

So to have “pretty severe amnesia” which I think you mean to have the amnesia to persist over days or weeks then I think this character would need a more severe head injury— which could probably be achieved if the passenger went through the windshield because she wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

The drunk kids— with an offset front end collision of around 45 mph and they were all seat belted into the car with air bag deployment then I could see them walking away with little to no injures. Likely, EMS would transport them to the ER for a medical exam because 1) they are minors (I’m assuming under 18) and 2) they’re drunk and could be responsible for an accident. The police might be interested in a legal blood alcohol levels which can be very tricky (for instance, our ER doesn’t do them. We’ll do a medical one, but this isn’t released to the police). Now, could a prosecutor later obtain those medical records through the courts? Probably with a warrant.