Could keeping your eyes open right before an accident help minimize injury?
My girlfriend always tends to close her eyes when shes passenger in the car whenever someone cuts me off or an aggressive maneuver has to be performed to avoid an accident.
Well she was in a car accident as a passenger. I wasn't driving. The driver hit a tree, my girlfriend had a punctured liver and a fractured back disc, nothing happened to the driver or the 3rd person in the back seat. Do you think if she had kept her eyes open she would've been able to anticipate the impact and do a better job bracing herself/ tensing up her muscles or hanging on to something?
If you close your eyes you can't anticipate anything so it seems you would be much more vulnerable.
Does this hold any truth?
You probably wouldn't be able to regulate whether you kept your eyes open or not. It would depend on the situation and how fast things happened. Your eyelids close as a natural defense to protect the eyes themselves. As far as bracing, you may suffer more injury than if you were more relaxed (if that's possible) in a collision.
September 10th, 2007 at 11:58 am
You probably wouldn't be able to regulate whether you kept your eyes open or not. It would depend on the situation and how fast things happened. Your eyelids close as a natural defense to protect the eyes themselves. As far as bracing, you may suffer more injury than if you were more relaxed (if that's possible) in a collision.
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September 10th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
There's some logic in what you said, but closing one's eyes is involuntary action and a person needs to be really aware of it an for some people it would be a huge effort not to close their eyes. I think some people will not be able to do it.
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September 10th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I believe that tensing up causes more injury than not. Think about the drunk drivers who survive "without a scratch". They didn't tense up because they were oblivious to the upcoming crash.
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