The Most Common Types Of Motorcycle Injuries In Florida

Residents of Punta Gorda and other parts of SW Florida have had the privilege to enjoy the milder weather of this state and its year-round warm temperatures. For motorcycle enthusiasts, in particular, this means that there’s no requirement for seasonal storage of their vehicles; they can ride their motorcycles on Florida streets and highways throughout the year.

Only a helmet, gloves, and whatever protection their clothing can provide are available to them to protect riders, versus seatbelts and airbags for other vehicle owners. As a result, it’s no surprise that motorcycle accidents tend to be more serious than automobile accidents. Here are the most common types of injuries faced by motorcyclists in SW Florida.

Road Rash

One of the most common—and fortunately, least serious—motorcycle injuries goes by the nickname “road rash.” The injury gets this nickname as it results from exposed flesh making contact with the asphalt of the road or other surfaces, and while sliding across the ground, friction burns and other abrasions occur as a result.
While these injuries are typically on the mild side of things, without treatment, more serious cases of road rash can result in permanent scarring and even infection.

Lower Extremity Injuries

Unsurprisingly the vast majority of lower extremity injuries for motorcyclists are leg injuries. While soft tissue injuries do occur, most of the leg injuries that happen to motorcyclists are bone fractures. Of those bone fractures, 95% of the breaks occur in a specific area, with fractures of the fibula and tibia; the major bones comprise the leg between the knee and the foot.

Statistically, this is the most exposed portion of the lower body in an accident, so it’s no surprise that injuries here would be so common.

Internal Injuries

Bones break because they are rigid and lack flexibility. However, the next most common injury is what happens to the rest of the body, which is made of softer mass, like organs. Blunt force trauma is a common way for internal injuries to occur. A person on a motorcycle usually gets into an accident by impacting something else, whether another vehicle or the road itself.

However, internal injuries can also occur due to penetration. Broken glass, cutting through skin and going deeper into the body, or debris, such as a sharp piece of wreckage penetrating the rib cage, can all wreak havoc with internal organs.

Spinal Cord Injuries

The spinal cord is a “cluster” of nerves, like tree roots, that start at the brain and spread out to every part of the body to issue commands, such as walking, or receive information and relay it back to the brain, such as what the eyes see. This means that depending on where along the spinal cord an injury takes place, it can result in anything from numbness in the arm to the loss of use of the legs and confinement to a wheelchair.

Traumatic Brain Injury

The head is the most important part of the body, housing our ability to think, feel, remember, reason, and process information. It’s also the one part of the body a motorcyclist can easily add some extra protection to, in the form of a helmet, but that doesn’t guarantee any harm in the event of an accident.

Traumatic brain injury or TBI is similar to a spinal cord injury in that the results widely vary and can be temporary or permanent. Disorientation, anger management, chronic depression, memory loss, inability to concentrate, and even sexual impotence are just a few of the possible outcomes of TBI.

If you’re a motorcyclist injured on SW Florida roads due to someone else’s negligence, talk to a motorcycle accident lawyer to get the compensation you’re owed.