Can I get a TBI from suddenly braking from 50 KM/H
 

Hi ever since I’ve had my 3rd concussion I’ve been extremely worrisome and just down right anxious from every bump or anything and need reassurance from a doctor or even a person if it’s as simple as a small bump that it’s not a concussion. So I was in a car that accelerated quickly to 50 km/h for 2 seconds and then suddenly braked and I’ve been feeling all the symptoms of a concussion. Am I just being crazy or is it actually possible at that speed

Can you elaborate a bit on your story? How did you get your first 3 concussions and what are your symptoms?

It i very unlikely that you could get a concussion from braking quickly in a car (yes, I'm sure it was VERY quickly, but it takes a LOT of force to cause the physical conditions necessary for a concussion), so please don't worry that you are getting some kind of permanent structural brain damage from this.

Lots of stories of people getting symptoms from low-force events on here. Generally they end up being the result of one or more of the following three causes: 1) A panic attack 2) A migraine attack 3) Exacerbation of an existing subtle neck injury.

Nope not possible.....

Maybe a soft tissue/ neck strain /tension/anxiety event...

Even if braked hard and skidded, 50km is only 31 mph..
probably muscle tension from tensing up..

You subject your spine and head to more impact forces walking down stairs than you can experience in a car starting or stopping quickly. The most a car can achieve is 1.7 Gs. You can experience 3 Gs or much more just walking down stairs. The difference is you are prepared for walking down steps. In a car, you are rarely prepared. The driver is but the passengers are not. So, the passenger is startled by the movement. The startle causes muscle tightening and sometimes, an anxiety event.

It would be according to how fast the vehicle stopped, and if either you.jerked maybe or hit your head. I could see it making it seen like you did it again. After a few TBI. I honestly know that with having a few head jerks that caused injury
And also having many that have caused TBI or post concussion and headaches it can happen to me.

Dmom, Unless the person smacks their head into a solid object, the sudden braking stop will do nothing more than a neck strange, no matter what speed. If the car hits another car or a solid object/pole/abutment, it cannot cause enough force to cause a concussion.

As Jo*mar says, maybe a soft tissue strain in the neck.

But is the amount of G's a car achieves by sudden braking the same amount of G's at which your brain accelerates/decelerates in your head? Wouldn't the amount of G's to the brain depend more on how the body reacts to the jolt - than the jolt itself? How can we be sure the whipping of the head isn't enough to cause injury in this situation?

Looking for clarity on this as the same thing happened to me yesterday. I am 8 months PCS.

Thanks!

I don’t have the expertise to try and answer that question but thinking about it logically, if stuff like that could cause tbis then everyone in the world would have suffered many many tbis in their life. Watch kids playing in the park, they are falling all over the place constantly

I think trusting our bodies and telling ourselves we aren’t as weak as think can help a lot. When something bad happens to me like hitting my head or falling on ice, instead of panicking I try and flip the narrative in my head and say, ‘by this happening I’m proving to myself I can take it and that I’m stronger then I thought’. It’s liberating facing your worst fears and realizing they aren’t as scary as you previously thought. Hope that makes sense.

I think there are a few factors that lead to a lot of confusion around this particular topic on this forum. If you ask any leading concussion neurologist this question, they will tell you it is absolutely not possible to cause structural damage to the brain or trigger a concussion from an event like this. It is, however, possible to trigger legitimate (sometimes long-lasting) neurological symptoms through either migraine pathology (happened to me--from a large pothole, not fast braking) or the exacerbation of an existing neck injury OR a panic attack.

Some people are also just very worried about "brain damage" without symptoms actually appearing. Which leads to a lot of worried posts.

I can say definitely to everyone in here, you are not going to get CTE from driving a car :) Everyone drives a car. Everyone brakes to avoid the deer. Everyone smacks their head on the door frame getting out. If you are having legitimate long-lasting neurological symptoms after events like this, you probably have something else going on and probably need to get your neck checked out and see a doc about the possibility of migraines with a vestibular trigger. Both of these things can give you symptoms that "feel like a new concussion", by the way.