Aussie driver issues warning after popular hair accessory caused serious head injuries after rear-end crash
An Australian woman has taken to TikTok to issue a warning for others after a popular hair accessory left her with a serious head injury after a rear-end crash.
Last month, 22-year-old Ella Carter was driving with her boyfriend to a party when traffic suddenly came to a halt, forcing her to slam on her brakes.
“A guy in a four-wheel drive rammed me from behind”, she told the Daily Mail. “He didn’t see that traffic had come to a stop and was going around 60 kilometres per hour.”
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“Almost instantly I felt something shatter in my hair. I was really dazed and confused and thought it might’ve been glass,” she said.
Ms Carter said she then began to feel pain spreading from the back of her head and felt her hair falling around her.
“That’s when I remembered I had a claw clip in - it had basically just crumbled.”
Luckily the clip didn’t puncture Ms Carter’s skin or skull, however, the impact still left her with serious whiplash and a heavy concussion that lasted for three weeks.
She told the Daily Mail that she is still receiving physiotherapy for the whiplash and hasn’t been able to return to work.
Ms Carter shared the aftermath of the incident in a TikTok, revealing that her sunglasses did not survive the impact.
Thankfully the claw clip Ms Carter was wearing was made of plastic and not metal - otherwise her injuries could have been much worse according to her doctors.
“I would definitely warn people to never wear a claw clip in the car while driving, because anything can happen in an instant, even if you’re doing nothing wrong,” Ms Carter said in her TikTok warning others.
“I’ve always worn them in the car and so have my friends. I genuinely didn’t think about it because it’s just my everyday hairstyle.”
Ms Carter’s TikTok has garnered a strong response, with many pointing out that medical professionals are already well aware of the dangers of wearing the popular accessory while driving.
“I saw a TikTok by a pathologist and they said they would not wear claw clips while driving as a cause of death in car accidents”, one person commented. Another said: “They embed into the skull in a collision”.
