17:48. A jolt from behind at a light, or a hard scrape down the side in a parking lot, and before your hands have stopped shaking the other car is already pulling around you. Taillights. Maybe a color. Maybe half a plate. Then it is gone, and you are sitting in a car that is still running, in traffic that has started to honk.

A hit and run is disorienting in its own way. There is no other driver on the shoulder, nobody to trade information with, nobody to apologize or to be angry at in person. In that emptiness it is easy to decide there is nothing to do. There is. One of those things is getting your neck examined, because your neck does not care whether the other driver stayed.

The first hour

Safety before anything

If anyone is hurt, if the car is stuck in a travel lane, or if the spot is unsafe, call 911. Do not chase the other car. Following a driver who already fled is how one crash becomes two. If your car moves and nobody is hurt, get it out of the lane and put the hazards on.

Then check yourself and anyone with you. Chest pain, a sudden severe headache, weakness or numbness on one side, trouble speaking, worsening confusion, or a blow to the head followed by vomiting means an ambulance or an emergency room now, not tomorrow.

Write it down while it is fresh

Memory of a fast event fades quickly, and adrenaline makes it patchy to begin with. Before you do anything else, open the notes app and put down whatever you have, even if it feels like almost nothing:

  • Any part of the plate, even two characters, and the state if you caught it.
  • Color and body style, sedan, pickup, SUV or van, and anything distinctive: a roof rack, a missing hubcap, a dented door, a sticker.
  • Which way it went, and the street or ramp it took.
  • Exactly where and when. A cross street, a store sign, a mile marker, the minute on the dashboard clock.
  • The driver, if you saw one, in a few words.
  • Where your car was hit, and where you hurt.

Look for anyone who stopped or slowed down and ask what they saw; get names and numbers. Photograph your car, the scene, and any paint transfer or pieces of the other car left on the road. Notice businesses or homes with cameras pointed at the street, and mention them when you report it.

The report is its own process

Report it to the police, even if you doubt anything will come of it. Whether an officer comes to the scene depends on the department and the situation, in the city, in St. Louis County and in St. Charles County alike, so if nobody comes out, ask how to file and get a report number before you hang up. Put that number in the same note as everything else.

That report is a separate track from your health, and it moves on its own schedule. This page is not going to follow it any further. What matters here is that the report exists and was made promptly, and then that you turn your attention to the other thing that happened tonight: your body was in a crash.

The anger and the replay

People expect to feel shaken after a crash. What surprises them after a hit and run is the anger. Someone hurt you and left. The replay can be relentless: the taillights, the half a plate, the thing you should have noticed. It can wake you at 3 a.m. with your jaw clenched and your shoulders up near your ears.

That is a human response, and it has a physical side. Shoulders and a neck held tight for days make a strained neck feel worse. Anger also crowds out everything else, so the stiff neck turns into a footnote to the story of the driver who fled. Try to keep the two apart. The driver is a police matter. The neck is yours.

If the replay does not ease, or sleep, concentration or getting back behind the wheel start to come apart around it, say so to a clinician. Stress after a crash is part of what you are recovering from, not a flaw in you.

No other driver still means an exam

This is the part people skip. With nobody to talk to at the scene, the crash can feel unofficial, as if it did not fully count. People go home, park the dented car, and wait to see how they feel.

Your neck does not know the other car left. The forces were the same. A jolt from behind moves your torso before your head, and that motion is what strains the neck whether the driver who caused it stopped or not. The NINDS description of whiplash lists neck pain and stiffness, headache, dizziness, and shoulder or back pain among the symptoms, and notes they can take a day or longer to appear. The seventy-two-hour lag covers why.

A hit and run also leaves you with less of a story than an ordinary crash. There is no other driver's account of what happened. The clearest description of what happened to your body is the one a clinician writes: a dated exam this week, with the history, the findings and a plan. It is a care document first, and it is the one piece of this night that is entirely in your hands. The dated exam explains what that record is and is not.

What to say when you call

  • It was a car crash, and the other driver left.
  • The date and time, and where your car was hit.
  • What hurts now, and what has changed since that night.
  • Whether your head hit anything, and whether there has been fog, headache or dizziness.

Bring your notes, the report number and a list of anything you are taking. You do not need the other driver's name to be seen. Getting examined this week walks through the first visit.

Missouri Injury Clinic sees auto-injury patients at three offices. Tesson Ferry in South County and Hazelwood in North County are open 9 to 6 Monday through Thursday and 9 to noon on Friday. O'Fallon is open Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, with Wednesday and Friday by appointment. Every office closes from 12 to 2, so call in the morning or after 2. See someone this week, whether or not anyone ever finds that car.