A traumatic brain injury can be caused by everything from a hard hit in a football game to a fall off of a stepladder. Things like football tend to get a lot of national attention, but the reality is that one of the leading causes of TBIs in the United States is the motor vehicle accident.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keep stats on these injuries, and they say that about 14.3 percent are related to auto crashes. On the whole, there are roughly two million such injuries every year, which means around 286,000 are caused by accidents.
A car accident can cause either an open or closed TBI. An open TBI happens when something actually penetrates the skull from the outside and then enters the brain. This is not nearly as common as a closed injury, which can happen when the head strikes a hard surface — like a windshield — and the brain moves violently within the skull.
Naturally, the risk of a TBI is high when traveling at high speeds, but experts do note that low speeds have also been linked to these injuries. Even a mild concussion may cause issues that last for a long time. Research is always being done on this, in part because of the concussions suffered in football games, and there is more recognition all the time that even “minor” brain injuries can have a serious impact.
Have you suffered a TBI or even a minor brain injury in an accident in Indiana? If so, you may be able to seek compensation, so it’s important to know how a brain injury could influence your life for years to come.
Source: Brain Injury Society, “Car Accidents and Traumatic Brain Injury,” Jacob Masters, accessed Aug. 04, 2016