Road Rash
Strong Legal Representation After an Accident Causing Road Rash
Road rash is a particularly gruesome injury. It leaves your skin raw, exposed, and often bleeding. In particularly severe cases, it may even expose your muscle and bone. Unfortunately, it is a very common injury to experience when involved in a serious accident. Those in exposed vehicles, such as bikes, ATV’s, and motorcycles are at a particularly high risk of sustaining the injury after an accident.
Some view road rash as an easy to recover from injury. But we at The Husband & Wife Law Team know that severe cases of road rash can be catastrophic. If your road rash accident was someone else’s fault, then you deserve to have your medical costs and emotional trauma covered by the at fault party’s insurance. Thankfully, our road rash attorneys focus on that.
What Causes Road Rash?
Road rash is most often caused by bare skin hitting or being dragged across pavement or dirt. The coarse surface causes small abrasions on the skin, resulting in the skin being stripped away. The impacted area of the body often turns red, becomes inflamed, is incredibly painful, and may begin to bleed. Common scenarios that cause road rash include:
Road rash rates often go up in the spring and summer, as the warm weather encourages people to go outside and make proper protective clothing uncomfortable to wear. However, protective gear will not do much if you are involved in a bad enough accident, such as a high-speed collision with a truck. With enough force, distance, and speed, the pavement could easily eat away at leather jackets and helmets, leaving your skin unprotected from further injury.
The Consequences of Road Rash Injuries
Because most people have experienced road rash at some point, whether it be from skinning your knees as a kid when you fell off your bike for the first time or during a particularly rough soccer match in high school, there is a common misconception that it’s an easy injury to heal from. While minor cases of road rash will often heal on their own with little medical intervention, major cases can be catastrophic.
Major road rash wounds can result in:
Infections
Permanent disability
Stitches
Severe damage to muscle and bones beneath the injury
When you receive road rash after being involved in a serious accident, it is unlikely that you will just be able to walk it off. Medical assistance may be required, and even if you believe it isn’t, you should still be examined by a doctor in order to confirm whether your injuries are minor or not.
Treating Road Rash
The first, and one of the most key steps, is to properly clean the wound. While you can do this at home with generic disinfectant, if you are suffering from a major wound, it is best to have a medical professional handle it. They will be able to make sure there isn’t a chance of the injury becoming infected. After the cleaning, they will likely cover the road rash up with a bandage in order to keep any bacteria from getting into your wound. The bandage should be changes regularly and kept clean to prevent infection.
This is just the treatment for minor road rash injuries, however. Severe cases will have to receive stitches to close the wound. Some particularly bad cases will even involve skin grafts, which can result in permanent scarring and take months to heal properly. Treatments may also include extensive surgeries in the case that there are foreign objects, such as rubble, glass, or metal embedded in the road rash.
These more extensive treatments will require months to heal properly and could leave you with extensive medical debt. While healing, you may be unable to work, which will cause you to lose out on important income that you need to pay for your treatments. One accident caused by negligence could leave your life completely turned upside down. But there may be a way for you to recover the damages you need to continue to live your life comfortably.
You Need Excellent Legal Help
As motorcycle enthusiasts ourselves, we at The Husband & Wife Law Team understand how stressful the prospect of road rash injuries is. It is incredibly easy to become involved in an accident because someone in a car didn’t check their blind spots before merging or opened their door right when you’re riding by. Motorcycle riders are at a very high risk for severe road rash, and, unfortunately, most motorcycle accidents are due to someone else’s negligence. That is why we take road rash injuries so seriously.
If you got road rash through an accident that wasn’t your fault, whether you were on a bike, in a car, or driving an ATV, then you are likely in a lot of pain and feeling very stressed about your future. You need expert legal guidance from a personal injury attorney and a chance to recover proper compensation. Call us and tell us about your case and learn if you can file a claim for compensation.