(NewsNation) — A viral TikTok video warning about the dangers of driving while wearing a claw clip has gone viral. But how much damage can a hair clip really do?
TikTok user Paisley_Rileyyyy posted a video of herself in the hospital after a car accident, holding a bloody claw clip and showing a bloody head injury. In a follow-up video, she explained that during an ATV accident, she hit her head on a metal bar and her claw clip caused a scalp injury.
Emergency room physician and content creator Dr. J. Mack Slaughter said viral videos can create a false impression of how dangerous or common that kind of injury is.
“A lot of people are assuming when they see videos with all this blood back there, that the claw clip itself has been embedded into the skull and is maybe causing bleeding in the brain and stuff like that,” he said.
Slaughter said there’s not any medical literature on that type of injury. But he surveyed some of his fellow doctors to see if they had treated any claw clip injuries.
The good news was neurosurgeons weren’t seeing any cases at all.
“The cases aren’t so serious to where we have to get neurosurgery involved. It’s something that we can take care of in the emergency department,” he explained.
While Slaughter said there wasn’t a trend of injuries from hair clips, it’s still better to be safe than sorry and take your hair down before you drive.
“At the end of the day, if you get into a car accident, the more you can mitigate damage to your body, the better,” he said. “So as long as … you don’t have everything just perfectly styled and ready for your prom or something like that, I would take that claw clip out before I get in the car.”