Felt fine at the scene. Now it hurts. You can still claim.

Why pain shows up later

At a crash scene your body is in survival mode. Adrenaline and other stress hormones surge, and one thing they do is suppress pain. You can have a genuine soft-tissue injury and feel almost nothing at the roadside.

Then the adrenaline wears off. The next morning — or two or three mornings later — the neck is stiff, the lower back aches, the shoulder won't lift properly. This is the classic pattern for whiplash and back strains, which often peak 24 to 72 hoursafter impact rather than at the moment of the crash. It's normal, it's well-documented, and the CTP scheme is built to expect it.

The injuries that surface late

Some injuries announce themselves immediately. Others creep in over days:

• Whiplash and neck soft-tissue injuries — the textbook delayed-onset injury.
• Back strains and disc problems — stiffness and nerve symptoms can take days to develop.
• Shoulder injuries — often masked early, painful once inflammation sets in.
• Headaches — tension-type or post-concussive, building over the following days.
• Concussion symptoms — fogginess, nausea, light sensitivity, mood changes that worsen over time. See concussion after a car accident.
• Psychological symptoms — anxiety, trouble sleeping, fear of driving — which can take weeks. See psychological injury after a car accident.

The 28-day rule and delayed injuries

This is the part that catches people out. The NSW CTP scheme gives you 28 days from the crash to put your claim in and lock in fully backdated benefits. The trouble is, by the time a delayed injury becomes undeniable, a chunk of that window may already be gone.

That's why the safe move — if there's any chance you've been hurt — is to get the claim in early, before you're certain. Having a claim on file when symptoms appear is far easier than scrambling to explain a delay after the window has closed.

And if the 28 days have already passed? It's usually not fatal. A claim can still be made beyond 28 days with a reasonable explanation for the delay — and "I felt fine until the symptoms appeared" is a reasonable explanation the scheme recognises. You may lose some backdated benefits, but the claim itself can live on. See the 28-day rule explained.

How to link a late injury to the crash

The whole question with a delayed injury is causation: did the crash cause this, or did it just happen to come up afterwards? You answer that with the medical record.

1. See a doctor as soon as symptoms appear. Don't wait to see if it settles. The shorter the gap between onset and first visit, the stronger the link.
2. Name the crash and the date. Tell the doctor clearly: "I was in a car accident on [date] and these symptoms have come on since." That sentence in the notes is what ties injury to accident.
3. Describe everything. Even symptoms that seem minor or unrelated. The full early picture protects you if something develops further.
4. Keep a short symptom diary. When it started, how it's changed, what you can't do. Useful medically and for the claim.

"But I told everyone I was fine"

People say "I'm okay" at crash scenes constantly — to police, to the other driver, to the insurer who rang the next day. It's human, and the scheme knows it. An early "I'm fine" does not cancel a real injury that shows up afterwards. What counts is the medical picture once the symptoms are actually there. Don't let a polite roadside "I'm okay" talk you out of getting checked and getting the claim in.

What we do for you

One call. If you're inside 28 days, we get the claim in fast to protect your backdated benefits. If you're past it, we put the case for the delay and get the claim moving anyway. Either way we set up treatment funding and run the insurer side so you can focus on recovering. We don't take a contingency cut from your damages.

Take the short check at /check, or call (02) 7238 7379 and a real person picks up.