After a Car Crash that Causes Facial Injuries
Car wrecks that cause injuries are generally quite traumatic. If you’re lucky, you heal without any lasting physical effects of those injuries – but remembering that traumatic experience will stick with you forever. For many others, however, the injuries never really heal completely, and some cause serious issues down the road.
If your injuries include damage to your face, compensation may be a little more complicated than an insurance settlement offers. Facial injuries range from superficial to disabling, and every one of them has a variety of factors that come into play. The Car Crash Captain dips into this topic on what happens and what you can expect.
What Facial Injuries Commonly Occur?
Injuries to the face aren’t usually on the list of injuries when we think of car wrecks. We think of the “bigger” injuries like TBI, broken bones, or lacerations. But we forget that the face is a delicate part of the body, injuries encompass a wide range.
Facial Fractures – Your face is made up of 14 bones. The most common to break are noses, jaws, cheeks, and orbital bones (around the eyes).
Soft Tissues – Cuts, burns, and scrapes can damage your face. Sometimes they’re major and cut deep, but even those that seem minor can end up scarring and leaving a permanent mark.
Dental Injuries – Broken teeth, fractured jaws, damaged soft tissue, and jaw alignment issues can all pop up if injured.
Eye Trauma – Your eyes are extremely delicate, even the smallest scratches can cause permanent loss of vision. Bone damage, vision problems, detached retina, loss or reduction of eyesight are all common.
Essentially if it’s on your face, part of your face, or otherwise includes facets of your face, it can be injured and would be considered a facial injury.
Common Causes of Facial Injuries
One of the ways to seek compensation is to know fully what actually happened. For example, a few years ago, there were Takata airbag issues where the airbag would explode open with such force, that the occupant would be injured by the device that was supposed to save them.
Other factors include:
- Broken Glass
- Dash or Steering Wheel
- Frame Protrusions
- Chemical Burns
- Secondary Damage (objects inside the vehicle hitting the face)
Most modern vehicles are designed to minimize these events, but there are times when safety devices don’t work properly, or they’re not used. Buckling up, keeping items secured, and otherwise minimizing the potential secondary damage work well, but if you’re hit hard enough that might not matter.
Compensation Available after Facial Injuries
Like other injuries there are two forms of compensation you will almost always receive without too many questions. Payment for your medical bills, and payment for lost wages. These are easy to calculate, quick to rack up, and the insurance companies have a hard time fighting against them when they’re literally on the receipts in front of you.
However, what those insurance companies want to minimize, is the pain and suffering you go through as a result of the facial injury.
It’s certainly easy to see that if you are a model, and now you have scarring on your face, your career is interrupted. But what about the rest of us who don’t model? No big deal… right? Not exactly. Even a small scar draws unwanted attention. You may minimize how much you go out anymore, avoid people, try to cover it and hide. Soon your mental health takes a toll, and your overall quality of life is ruined.
That’s a small scar. What if you lose an eye? Or both eyes? What if you can’t chew and eat normally ever again? What if your nose is crushed and can’t be reconstructed so you can only breathe through your mouth? What if your spouse leaves you because they no longer find you attractive?
All of these factors reduce your quality of life and can cause big issues later on. Financial compensation won’t fix the problem, but it can make life easier to deal with when you have to learn to love living in a whole new way.
Herbert Law Group Helps Maximize Your Settlement
That’s why you need car crash experts like the lawyers at Herbert Law Group. With years of experience, hours and hours of cases, and Zach Herbert joining the ranks of the top 2% of all personal injury lawyers in Texas, Herbert Law Group knows how to maximize your case, so you can live life to the fullest regardless of what happened.
First, we just need to have a quick conversation with you. We’ll find out what happened, how we can help, and make a plan to go forward from there. Call our offices at 214-414-3808, or fill out our contact form and we’ll reach out to you.