$725,000 Settlement for I-5 Rear-End Collision Near Albany, Oregon

A business was operating a pickup truck and trailer southbound on Interstate 5 toward Albany, Oregon on a rainy spring afternoon. The freeway is straight and flat in that area. Traffic had come to a full stop in both southbound lanes well ahead of the rig.

A witness described the pickup truck as “flying” toward the stopped vehicles ahead of him, despite the rain and despite the slick, wet road. The witness said that the driver of the speeding truck should have been able to see that traffic ahead had stopped, “as you could see brake lights for half a mile.” The witness thought the truck driver “must have been on his phone or something.”

As the truck came upon the stopped traffic, rather than braking or slowing down, the driver chose to instead change lanes. The truck smashed into the back of a pickup truck that was sitting in the line of stopped traffic, knocking the pickup off the road and into the median cable. The driver of the hit vehicle, Rick, was trapped inside his Ford F150.

An ambulance rushed Rick to the nearest hospital. Rick had a concussion; sprained ribs; thoracic spondylosis; sprains of ligaments of the thoracic, lumbar, and cervical spine; spinal disc desiccation at T7-8 with a bulge; pain in the right shoulder and left hip; radiculopathy in the thoracic and lumbar regions; cervicalgia; and PTSD.

Those kinds of injuries cannot be fixed with surgery. Rick was treated by his primary care doctor, a chiropractor, massage therapy, physical therapy, and was also referred to a specialist because of his continued headaches, blurred vision, and numbness and tingling down his legs with significant low back pain.

The concussion injury alone caused Rick to experience constant headaches and migraines, dizziness, nausea, mental “cloudiness” or loss of focus, and emotional lability.

Many months after the collision, and after a hundred treatment sessions, Rick’s lower back was not improving, and he was still struggling with pain, which worsened with deep breaths, coughing, and performing normal everyday activities – particularly his work activities.

Rick’s primary care doctor ordered a series of MRIs and referred him to a pain center. The MRIs revealed the spinal disc desiccation of the T7 – T8 level and an annular bulge. His doctors treated him with a thoracic epidural steroid injection, which provided some relief, and then later with medial branch blocks, which provided some additional relief. Those were followed by radio-frequency ablation in the thoracic spine.

Rick was a very young man when he was injured. He had been leading a healthy and active life, which included weight-lifting multiple times a week, and he had previously competed in school sports. The high speed crash caused Rick to suffer injuries that affected his ability to lift, to twist, to breathe deeply, and to perform his job duties at the career he only just started.

Rick was unable to work for a substantial period of time, then returned on a gradual basis, increasing his hours over time. Despite being highly motivated, the strain of lifting, bending, and crawling was uncomfortable and painful, and limited Rick’s work abilities. Eventually he settled into a less physically demanding job, and got help from his co-workers on the heavier tasks, but at a lower rate of pay.

As is often the case after this kind of trauma, not all of Rick’s injuries were physical. Shortly after the collision, Rick began to have nightmares involving memories of the crash, increased feelings of vulnerability (especially while driving past the site of the crash), and was experiencing a profound sense of loss. He sought counseling to help with his PTSD symptoms.

Rick’s case reminds us of several things. One is how common PTSD is after a serious motor vehicle collision. A recent international medical review indicates that 20-45% of people have PTSD shortly after a crash, and that after a year, roughly 18-30% still experience PTSD symptoms. (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Resulting from Road Traffic Accidents (RTA): A Systematic Literature Review (2025)).

Another reminder from Rick’s case is how a person can look fine on the outside but have serious physical injuries on the inside. None of Rick’s diagnosed injuries from the collision are visible to a casual observer. But they were serious enough for him to suffer a large loss of income and earning capacity. Injuries of this kind often require a substantial amount of legal work to seek fair compensation, and the outcome of these cases is more uncertain than cases with more visible injuries, or cases with more dramatic treatment (such as surgery).

After lengthy litigation, Rick’s case was finally settled before trial for $725,000.