What Causes Neck & Lower Back Pain After a Car Accident?

July 12, 2025 | Car Accidents

What Causes Neck & Lower Back Pain After a Car Accident?

Car accidents happen in many ways, but one thing remains constant: They occur suddenly. Your body doesn’t get a warning, and even at lower speeds, the force of an impact can rattle your head or twist your body in ways it’s simply not built to handle. Neck and lower back pain, therefore, are two of the most common injuries from car wrecks.

These kinds of injuries aren’t always visible, either, which makes them trickier to identify and deal with. You won’t always see bruises, cuts, or broken bones, and pain might not show up for hours or days. But once it does, it can be intense; even a seemingly minor discomfort can be a signal of a deeper issue.

Common Types of Injuries That Cause Neck and Lower Back Pain

The most common types of injuries that cause neck and lower back pain are:

Whiplash

Whiplash occurs when your head snaps forward and back, much like the cracking of a whip. It’s most common in rear-end collisions, as your body generally stays put, but your neck gets yanked around. As a result, the muscles and connective tissues within your neck can stretch or tear.

Symptoms of whiplash can include stiffness, headaches, dizziness, shoulder pain, and even trouble focusing or sleeping. These signs can be minor at first, but they’ll often persist and worsen for weeks or even longer if not treated.

Spinal Compression and Herniated Discs

Your spine is made up of bones called vertebrae, and between each is a soft disc that acts like a cushion. In a car crash, these discs can shift or rupture. Such an injury, typically referred to as a herniated disc, is especially common in the lower back but can also occur in the neck, pressing on nearby nerves to cause numbness, tingling, or weakness in certain muscles.

Compression can also happen in the spine when it absorbs too much force and the vertebrae press down on each other. The result is chronic pain that makes it hard to sit, stand, or walk for any length of time.

Soft Tissue Damage

Muscles, tendons, and ligaments can take as much of a beating as any other part of the back or neck. A sudden jolt can tear or strain these soft tissues and lead to soreness and inflammation, which can be tough to deal with, given that these areas of the body move so often.

Soft tissue injuries are also tricky because they don’t always show up on imaging scans and can take time to appear, though that doesn’t make them any less real or serious. People often describe a dull ache, stiffness, or burning feeling, which are all signs that the tissue is inflamed or not healing properly.

Pinched Nerves

Whenever something shifts in your spine, it can press against a nerve and cause a sharp, shooting pain. When shifting occurs in the neck, the feeling can travel down your arms, and in the lower back, it can affect your legs or hips. The pain might come and go or be a persistent ache.

Some people also develop radiculopathy, which refers to a nerve root becoming irritated or compressed. It can make even the simplest movements painful, and if left untreated, it can cause muscle weakness and permanent damage.

Don’t Wait Until It Gets Worse

You don’t need to be involved in a major accident to end up dealing with serious neck or back pain. Similarly, speed isn’t always the deciding factor with injuries; fender benders and low-speed crashes can still twist your body in unnatural ways. Often, it’s about the angles and forces involved and how your body handles them.

People often try to ignore their pain in the beginning in the hopes that it’ll go away. However, that can lead to chronic problems that those affected have no choice but to adapt to as a part of daily life, which makes recognizing the cause early so important. Seek immediate medical attention so that you can get treatment for your injuries.

If you are suffering from neck or lower back pain after a car accident, you may be entitled to compensation. Contact Marzzacco Niven & Associates to schedule a free consultation with one of our car accident lawyers:

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