You can fill a jumbo jet with the number of New Zealanders who suffer from head or brain injuries each week. And as brain injury awareness week kicks off on Monday educators are calling it our "silent epidemic".
Tamati Paul had a bright future ahead of him until one fateful night when his world was shattered by a drunk driver. The Gisborne teenager received such bad head injuries he wasn't expected to live.
New statistics from ACC and the Stroke Foundation paint a grim picture of 90 New Zealanders sustaining a brain injury every day. Just under half of those are in car crashes.
"In 1970 we had 700 people die on New Zealand roads, last year about 450. We've got a million more drivers, loads more miles covered - the reality is that people are surviving the crashes rather than dying," says John Clough, president of the Brain Injury Association of New Zealand .
There are 33,000 brain injuries a year ranging from mild to severe and while car crashes are the biggest culprit around 20% are suffered through strokes.
Sport plays its part too with boxing at the top followed by league and rugby. And when you have been hit experts say no matter how trivial the blow, look out for vital signs.
"The symptoms we would be worried about include headache, vomiting, confusion and or unusual behaviour," says Wellington Hospital neurosurgeon Martin Hunn.
