Common Injuries in Virginia Motorcycle Accidents
A motorcycle accident can cause significant harm to the people involved, and especially the motorcycle driver. These injuries can sadly be life altering and drastic. A Virginia motorcycle accident attorney can help anyone hurt in a motorcycle accident, to pursue compensation and damages, if the other party is liable for the accident.
Paralysis
Unfortunately, paralysis results from motorcycle accidents more frequently than it does from passenger vehicle accidents. The main reason this is true is because the riders are so exposed and frequently they are ejected from the bikes. Head, brain, neck injuries, and spinal cord injuries are all common in motorcycle accidents. Additionally, broken bones and very serious cuts and lacerations are also common.
Broken Bones
Broken bones happen. There are going to be two impacts with just about every motorcycle accident. That increases the likelihood of broken bones because if a car strikes someone on the side or if they hit their rear tire they may lay down the bike and only have one impact physically with their body. But there may be a second impact from the car hitting their tire and them striking the ground.
Many accidents happen when the car is changing lanes, motorcycles are changing lanes or the driver gets T-boned. If there is an impact on the side where the individual’s body is exposed to contact with the other vehicle, they can break bones by a crushing injury in between the vehicle and the motorcycle or a blunt force injury from when they are ejected from the bike and then they strike the ground. Those are ways that can break bones easily.
Recovering from Broken Bones
In addition to how exposed riders are, just the speed at which most of these accidents happen increases the likelihood of breaking bones. Once they have a broken bone, it is going to depend on the nature of the break as far as how long it is going to take to recover and whether the person’s injuries are permanent. That is something that a medical professional needs to evaluate. Displaced fractures, which often require surgery, are common with motorcycle accidents. That is not only because of the angle at which the impact comes from, but also the secondary impact can further displaced or damage a bone.
A lot of the time compound fractures occur in which a bone is sticking out of the skin. It is gruesome, but also extremely debilitating. In those types of breaks, the individual is almost always going to need a surgical fixation. Hardware, like rods, screws, and plates are used to fit the bones into another bone so they can properly fuse and heal. That is a process that gets extremely involved, expensive, and risky. While the surgical procedure has improved vastly over the years, there is never any guarantee that the person is going to be as good as new.
Those broken bones can really have a huge impact on a person’s life. The severity of such a break is usually going to be much greater with the motorcycle accident than with a driver holding onto the steering wheel when rear-ended and maybe breaking a wrist by tensing up and holding on to the steering wheel. If motorcycle driver is ejected 50 feet or 100 feet in the air, and land on that same wrist, the degree of the break is going to be much more serious.
Traumatic Brain Injury
Some of the most common injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident include open or close head injuries. That means it can be something where the skin is broken and they crack a skull and bones are sticking out, or it can all happen inside the head without breaking the skin and include traumatic brain injuries (TBI), concussion.
A traumatic brain injury is an injury that happens to the brain. TBI is usually caused by trauma directly to the head, but it does not actually have to include direct contact with the head. If a person’s body is jarred enough such that their brain slams up against the side of the skull, they can suffer traumatic brain injury or concussion without actually ever striking their head on something.
Traumatic brain injuries have all sorts of horrible effects that a lot of the time are permanent and can affect speech, language, memory, and strength. All of these things can be affected by a traumatic brain injury.
There are a couple of different types of brain injuries, like a shearing brain injury that results from a heavy impact with a lot of physical force. Unfortunately, a lot of the time it renders people completely dependent on others for the rest of their lifetime. They are very serious injuries and a helmet can reduce or eliminate the risk. In addition, if someone has an initial brain injury and they do not properly heal and they start engaging in activity, they could be exposed to another one and increase the risk of permanent harm, too.
Other Common Injuries
Other injuries can include eye injuries. This is why it is extremely important to wear eye protection while riding a motorcycle. All of these injuries are very common as are neck injuries. Internal injuries happen a lot too, because people get thrown from their bike and with that degree of force that you can puncture a lung or damage a kidney. That is the reason why it is so important to wear a helmet as well as other protective gear. It is amazing to see people walk away from bad accidents, and a lot of the time it is because of the protective gear they were wearing.
