Each of your wrists and hands contain 27 bones, 13 that start in your wrist and extend into your palms and 14 in your fingers and thumbs. These bones are delicate and have a higher risk of being fractured or crushed from blunt trauma, which often occurs in car crashes.

 

There are many ways your hands and wrists can be damaged in a car accident. For instance, in the seconds before the crash, or even while the crash is occurring, you might brace your hands against the side or ceiling of your car. This puts intense pressure on the bones, tendons and ligaments in your hands and wrists.  Some people throw their hands up during the collision, which can cause their hands or wrists to crash into the airbag, dashboard, window, steering wheel, or other objects or parts of the interior of the vehicle.  If you grip the inside of the steering wheel rather than the outside and the wheel spins or twists in a crash, your hands could get caught and violently spun around the wheel.

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