What to Do After a Car Accident in New Jersey

Most people walk away from a collision, feel more or less fine, and decide to see how it goes. It is the most understandable decision in the world, and it is the one that costs the most.

Two clocks start at the moment of impact. One is medical: the first few weeks decide how much of a soft-tissue or nerve injury becomes permanent. The other is on paper: what gets written down, and when, is what an insurer and — if it comes to it — an attorney will work from months later. Both clocks run whether or not you feel hurt today.

Here is the order to do things in.

At the scene, and the same day

If anyone has hit their head, lost consciousness, is confused, has weakness or numbness in an arm or a leg, severe neck pain, chest or abdominal pain, or a headache that is getting worse — that is an emergency room, not an appointment. Do not drive yourself.

Otherwise, before you leave:

Get the police report number if officers attended.
Exchange insurance and contact details with the other driver.
Photograph both vehicles, the damage, the positions, the plates and the street.
Note the date and time. You will be asked for it more times than you expect.

The first 24 to 72 hours: expect to feel worse, not better

This is the part that catches people out. Adrenaline masks a great deal at the scene, and the injuries a collision most often causes — to the joints, muscles and ligaments of the neck and back, and to the nerve roots that leave the spine — commonly take a day or two to declare themselves. Stiffness on the second morning is the normal pattern, not a complication.

So feeling fine on the day of the crash is not evidence that you were not hurt. It is simply too early to know, and treating it as an all-clear is the single most common reason somebody arrives here three months later with a problem that was easier to treat in week one.

In the same window, tell your own insurer. New Jersey auto policies include personal injury protection (PIP), which pays for medical treatment after a crash regardless of who caused it — so this is not an admission of anything, and it is not a favour to the other driver. Most policies require notice promptly, and set a deadline for the PIP application itself. The exact requirement is in your policy; call and ask rather than assume.

The first two weeks: be examined by a physician

Two things happen in this window, and they run together.

Medically, it is when treatment does the most good. Inflammation is at its peak, movement is at its most restricted, and what you do about that decides how much of it is still with you next year. Untreated, the same injury tends toward chronic pain, a range of motion that never fully returns, and nerve symptoms that stop being reversible.

On paper, it is when the record either exists or does not. A delay between the crash and your first medical visit is the first thing an insurance adjuster looks for, and a long gap between visits is the second. Neither is a rule written down anywhere — it is simply what gets argued: that if it took you six weeks to see anybody, it cannot have been that bad, or it must have been caused by something else.

It is worth being examined by a physician specifically, rather than starting therapy alone. A medical doctor can order and read the imaging, test the nerve directly with EMG and nerve conduction studies, prescribe, inject under live imaging, and write findings into a medical record. That is a different scope of practice, and it is the one an insurer and an attorney build a case from — "a documented nerve injury at a named level" is a fact, and "my arm feels numb" is a complaint.

The legal clock, briefly

This is a medical practice and none of the following is legal advice — but the deadlines are real, and people miss them because nobody told them the clock had started.

PIP is no-fault. It pays your medical treatment regardless of who caused the crash. Using it does not mean you are blaming yourself.
New Jersey gives you two years from the date of the accident to file a personal injury lawsuit. It sounds like a long time. It is not, once you have spent six months hoping the pain settles.
If a government vehicle or a public entity was involved, the window to give notice is far shorter — a matter of months, not years.
Your policy has its own deadlines, separate from all of the above, for notifying the insurer and for filing the PIP application.

Talk to your insurer about the policy deadlines and to an attorney about the legal ones. What we can tell you is the medical half: the sooner you are examined, the better both halves go.

What we do here

Dr. Yoo is a board-certified physiatrist — a physician who specialises in the non-surgical treatment of the spine and musculoskeletal system. After a collision, that means one office for the whole of it: the examination, the nerve testing, the imaging, treatment, and the documentation of every visit.

Examination by the physician, not a referral to somebody else
EMG and nerve conduction testing where the examination calls for it, performed and read here
Musculoskeletal ultrasound and C-arm fluoroscopy, so soft-tissue damage is found and injections are placed where the testing says
Physical therapy in the same building, through our in-house partner
Findings documented at every visit, which is what an insurer or an attorney will eventually ask for

You can read more about care after a car accident, or about whiplash — the neck injury a collision most often causes, and the one that most often arrives two days late.

Call us

If you were in a crash — this week or two months ago — call (201) 408-5151 with the date of the accident and your insurance details, and we will tell you the next available appointment and go through your coverage with you. We are in Englewood, and patients come to us from across Bergen County, including Teaneck, Palisades Park, Fort Lee, Tenafly and Ridgefield.

The best day to be examined was the day after the accident. The second best is today.