Even if you ride as responsibly as possible, you may still be at a high risk of getting into a motorcycle accident through the negligence of another person on the road. Regardless of how it happens, a motorcycle wreck can lead to serious injuries with long-lasting consequences. You can incorporate an injury into a civil lawsuit or settlement demand with a skilled attorney’s assistance.
It can be helpful to know a little bit about the common injuries associated with motorcycle accidents that lawyers are accustomed to building claims around. Here are some of the most common types of motorcycle accident injuries that our team sees when dealing with crashes.
The legs and feet are the most common place for injuries to occur during traffic accidents involving motorcycles. Even road rash can be extremely painful and deceptively tricky to treat. More serious damage like bone fractures, ligament and tendon tears in the knees and calves, and crushing injuries affecting the feet can be exponentially worse.
Part of what makes motorcycle wrecks uniquely dangerous is the likelihood that a biker will be thrown off their motorcycle and into a nearby car, curb, or another obstacle. Someone who throws their arms out to break this kind of fall may suffer fractures in multiple places, dislocations in the shoulders, permanent nerve damage, or total loss of a limb as a result.
Motorcyclists have nothing preventing them from taking the full force of a vehicle directly into whatever body part it hits. Particularly catastrophic consequences can occur if this kind of impact is mainly in a rider’s torso. Broken ribs may be the least severe injury caused by a crash compared to punctured lungs, ruptured livers or spleens, and even heart trauma, which requires emergency medical intervention.
Wearing a properly fitted safety helmet can reduce your risk of suffering a life-altering and potentially life-threatening brain injury in a motorcycle accident. Even with a helmet on, you may still sustain lacerations and fractures if a piece of debris hits you in the face or head during a collision.
Just like an impact to the torso can cause debilitating damage to internal organs, an impact to a motorcyclist’s back can cause irreversible trauma to the spinal cord. Even minor injuries to this part of the body can cause long-lasting loss of sensation and motor function. A total severing of the spinal cord invariably causes permanent paralysis in every part of the body below the injury site.
If you have been seriously injured in any of these ways, you have help available from a skilled lawyer in enforcing your right to civil recovery. Call today to set up a consultation.