Under Communist rule, Lithuanian drivers didn't carry personal insurance. Nor had the country developed any tradition of people suing one another. Of course Lithuanian drivers, like everyone else, suffer rear-end collisions. So a Norwegian doctor, Harald Schrader, headed a team of seven Lithuanian and Norwegian doctors to study whiplash in Lithuania. They expected some of those who'd been struck to suffer lingering effects.
Whiplash is an injury to the upper spinal column.
From time to time, we all suffer whiplash as serious as that in most rear-end collisions. The percentage of people reporting general neck-pain or headache problems was roughly the same in both groups. Schrader's own country, Norway, with 4.2 million people, has an organization of 70,000 people who claim to suffer from whiplash and are claiming, or trying to claim, compensation for it. That comes to nearly two percent of the Norwegian population. Of course inertial head injuries can't be taken lightly.