Whiplash is a soft-tissue injury to the neck caused by the head whipping backward and forward — the signature injury of rear-end collisions, even at parking-lot speeds. Symptoms include neck pain and stiffness, headaches at the skull base, shoulder pain, dizziness, and tingling in the arms.
Its legal significance comes from its timing: symptoms frequently surface hours or days after the crash, after adrenaline fades. People who told everyone "I'm fine" at the scene, then wake up unable to turn their head, worry it's too late — it is not, but the delay is exactly what insurers use to dispute causation.
See a doctor as soon as symptoms appear and say explicitly that they began after the crash — the medical record is what ties injury to accident. Soft-tissue injuries don't show on X-rays, which makes consistent documented treatment, not imaging, the backbone of these claims.