‘Thought I was going to die’

Jeena Panesar said she was wearing her hair in a claw clip when she was injured in a “traumatic” car crash on Jan. 24.

Now she’s advising people to eschew the popular hair accessory — at least while driving.

The 19-year-old British student teacher claims she was driving 50 miles per hour on a foggy country road, where the speed limit was 60, when her car hit a tree before skidding and flipping over, crushing her head against the roof.

Panesar said the claw clip jammed into the back of her head until “most or all” of it lodged skull-deep into her flesh.

“It’s sad to say, but I kind of thought I was going to die,” Panesar, who hails from Derbyshire, England, told Kennedy News.

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She explained the combination of the clip and the car roof left her in shock.

“When the car started crashing, the claw clip wedged into the back of my head. Then the car roof clamped down into my head, so it was a joint effort from both,” she explained.

“It was just really painful. If you’ve ever worn a claw clip and forgotten to take it out and lay down on your back, it’s that pressure and that discomfort.”

Panesar said she crawled out of her car’s shattered window before flagging down a driver in a passing vehicle and passing out.

She said she regained consciousness to find concerned passersby had called her parents and paramedics who drove her to Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, where a nurse removed the claw clip.

“When I arrived at the hospital, a female nurse was like, ‘Oh that’s probably really painful.’ She turned me over and then took it out,” Panesar recounted.

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Photos of Panesar show a 30-centimeter wound running from the back of her scalp to her left eyebrow, which she says she’s not able to move even six weeks after the crash because of muscle damage in her forehead.

“Because I work in a school, I keep my hair up in a claw clip at the back because I can’t be bothered to brush it,” she noted.

“I didn’t know wearing a claw clip while driving was a problem until I had the accident. It has definitely deterred me from wearing claw clips.”

She said she stayed in the hospital for three days, so her skull-deep wound could be cleaned and stitched up.

Panesar is hoping people will avoid wearing claw clips while driving and opt for an elastic hair tie instead.

“Now I’ve seen it’s happened to other people too, so I’m part of a rare handful of people in this world who have experienced that,” she claimed.

“Don’t wear a claw clip whatsoever when driving. If you want to tie your hair up, just use a rubber band.”