Headaches from driving over potholes/bumps?

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Traveling over potholes in a car causes me to feel a sudden pressure type of headache from the jolt. I think I’ve always felt this, but when I learned to drive and was able to avoid the bumps on uneven road surfaces I experienced it a lot less, I was also less anxious than when I was a passenger.
In the last year I regularly travel through a town (driving under 50 kph) with an atrocious road surface, the potholes are unavoidable and I am noticing the jolt type pressure headaches again.
I am going to discuss this with my GP within the next fortnight because I have spoken with a few people about the head pain and no one can relate to the experience. Is anyone here familiar with this type of headache?

Not only do they give me a headache, they make me feel sick. Especially as a passenger. As I driver I always avoid them, or slow down if I can't. They are also bad for the car.

I never got headaches from them. I only found them to be painful and uncomfortable so I always hated speed bumps. When my dad told me it's to slow down traffic, that made sense because those things are meant to torture you so it forces you to drive slow over them so it's not so painful. But now they don't hurt anymore because I had gotten so used to them. Actually the real reason why people slow down is because they ruin your car if you drive over them too quickly, not because they are too painful. I think pot holes are good speed bumps also. We had lot of those in Montana so we always drove over them but our drive way would get real bad so I joked one time that we had a bunch of speed bumps to slow down cars. And hitting a ;pothole with your car can be dangerous so it's best to drive over them or to slow down if you can't avoid it because it can cause the car to spin pout of control. Plus it's also bad for the car.

Maybe using the word headache isn't quite accurate, the jolt moves upward to the top of my head and I feel a pressure type pain there, it subsides; but on this stretch of road there isn't enough time between the bumps and it becomes a pressure pain that only eases after I leave the town. I know where each of the potholes are at this stage and avoid them if possible, but most of the time its not as the roads surface is uneven for a 2 km stretch, the worst are the square manholes because the road surface is higher than the loose covers, and are quite noisy to drive over too.
Speed bumps have the same effect, and also sharp corners/sudden sharp breaking when I am a passenger. As a passenger I experience travel sickness unless I watch the road as if I am driving and the person knows how to drive smoothly.

I think it could be called a vortex headache, which is linked to tension in muscles starting behind the ear and joining the breast bone and another to the collar bone, or a v shaped muscle running from the cervical spine to the back of the skull. Maybe a good massage could help, as its an area of my body that carries a lot of tension due to my kinky spine.

I don't have that problem, but I do try to be careful about potholes as they can damage the car. In addition to speed bumps, some local intersections have deep dips that are designed to slow people down, and to reduce street flooding in rainy weather because they have small drainage canals to direct rainwater to the storm drain system.

I think it is important to talk to your doctor, and perhaps an orthopedist, physical therapist, or chiropractor. There could be something going on in your spine that causes a nerve to be touched wrong when you go over a bump or around a tight curve.

When I had my back problems a few years ago, going down country roads at 20-25mph felt like riding a roller coaster. Any bump or curve was HORRIBLE. But my core was completely shot. I am back to normal now and no longer have problems.

Hi Nerdygirl, I had a prolapsed lumbar disc a decade ago, and before that I crushed my coccyx, since then Ive had tension in my upper back plus intermittent sciatica. Im not exercising enough these days, will have to work on my core strength.

^This is similar to the road road surface for the worst 2k stretch, plus the sunken manholes, storm drains and regular potholes and with the sides of the road dipping and very uneven where the council dug it up a few years back to address burst water pipes/to put in the broadband, and then patch 'fixed' the surface.

This is a very typical road for most of Queens.

In fact, many roads are actually much worse.

Actually, it's quite similar to the way the road is on the Grand Central Parkway between Exits 25 and 24. A rather rude introduction to NYC (Exit 25 is the last exit in Nassau County; Exit 24 is the first exit in NYC).

Most of the time, speed bumps in places other than the US are usually more drastic than US ones.

Same with drain pipes and manhole covers.

After the winter of 2015, the potholes on the highways here were absolute murder. Not so bad this year, though.

Yeah, that road is pretty bad.

I needed surgery on my back because I had a calcified disc and also a cyst which were pressing on my sciatic nerve. No amount of exercise or physical therapy was going to fix that! However, as part of my treatment and recovery, I did see a physical therapist. That was extremely valuable. She discovered that I have a loose sacroiliac joint and told me which activities/exercises to avoid so as not to aggravate the problem. She also showed me some thing I can do at home if my pelvis goes out of alignment. I was also shown different stretches to do to help me with my extremely tight hamstrings, which also contribute to pain and movement issues.

I have really learned over the years that one benefits tremendously by seeing a (good) medical professional for advice regarding diet and exercise.