3.5 Inertial Damping Failure
Without the Inertial Damping Field, Voyager's accelerations would kill the crew, so a failure of the system and its backups would trap the ship at its current speed because any significant speed change would take months.
Voyager travels at such tremendous speeds (even when under impulse power) that the acceleration and deceleration involved would instantly turn our crew to chunky salsa unless protected by the Inertial Damping Field. Should this system (and its backups) fail, the ship would be limited to very gentle speed changes (compared to what it ordinarily does). It would take many months for the ship to accelerate to Warp One, or to change warp factor. This would mean that the ship would be essentially trapped at whatever speed it is travelling, for any significant speed change would take a very long time or would kill the crew and severely damage the structure of the starship.