Wanted: Advice on motorbike accidents

I've been in a wreck myself, and I'm an operating room nurse. I can give you a little bit of advice.

You're spot on about wearing a helmet, and thus having some pretty good protection for your head. If you're MC is wearing a helmet, it's extremely unlikely he would ever need a metal plate inside his head. HOWEVER... something that is very common is increased intracranial pressure due to a sudden forward motion of the brains inside your skull. It's called coup/contra coup. This motion can cause blood vessels to tear, resulting in hemorrhaging of blood inside the skull. One way to relieve the pressure sometimes is to remove a piece of the skull to allow the brain to expand outside of the cavity. I've never seen this personally, but have heard about it in our text books. Your MC could have a metal plate placed after a procedure like this.... hope that helps!

I was hit by a car going exactly 30 mph. My neck hurt like SOB, but my head was completely fine. If you are wearing a licensed and approved helmet you almost would never fracture your skull. I'm sure it's possible, but if you hit that hard your brains would be mush resulting in you being dead.

Also it's VERY common for someone to feel fine after an accident and then suddenly drop dead due to a small bleed inside their head. That's why they will usually keep you at the hospital for a little while even if you feel fine.

What if the latch in the helmet snapped ? Or he forgot in his haste to snap it shut? Don't know it there's a law in relation to exactly what kind of helmet it has to be, but here in Italy most people wear the one with the latch under the chin (several kids do not do up the latch)

I've actually forgot to latch my helmet a few times and noticed as I was going down the road.

He could be wearing an open face helmet. Or, ofc, if he's on private property (someone's drive or field or whatnot) he doesn't, legally, need to be wearing his helmet

A friend of mine had a similar scenario (well, it turned out worse due to brain damage) -- looking somewhere that wasn't the road, missed a slight bend, head first into a lamp-post. No other injuries and he wasn't going too fast (under 30) but he was wearing an open face helmet

I've ridden with people who deliberately left their helmet unfastened. Didn't make sense to me.

At any rate, does it have to be a metal plate? I think these days where they have time to plan cranial surgery, they removed the bone plate, and put it elsewhere in the body for a while, so that when it's time to replace it, they're using the patient's own bone. So you'd still have the crash, and cranial surgery, but no metal plate.

Pedal cyclists (OK, know you are not asking about that but.. ) get injured from head hitting the curb on the pavement. Don't know if motor cyclists tumble towards that.

From motor cycling friends, would just comment on the rest of the protective gear - as in good thick leather, or at minimum jeans with Kevlar knee pads and jackets with elbow pads and thick gloves, and steel toecaps on boots. If you want the rest of the person to be OK(ish) you will need to make sure the rest of the person is protected.
I understand debridement to get grit and other dirt out of deep grazes of the sort gained from skidding along a tarmac road is excruciating - and can involve a medical sort of scrubbing brush. Also scars afterwards.

Have your MC pull into a car park, shut the bike off, and remove his helmet while still astride the machine. A car driven by a distracted driver (texting, maybe?) goes out of control, careens into the car park at speed, strikes the motorcycle sending your MC airborne for some distance. The resulting head injury can be as specific as you may deem needed for the story.

It's still a motor vehicle (car/motorcycle) accident, but your MC is not at fault - alas, small consolation when one is injured.

What does the story need?

ironmikezero said:

Have your MC pull into a car park, shut the bike off, and remove his helmet while still astride the machine. A car driven by a distracted driver (texting, maybe?) goes out of control, careens into the car park at speed, strikes the motorcycle sending your MC airborne for some distance. The resulting head injury can be as specific as you may deem needed for the story.

Click to expand...

This is a really nice solution.

I've known one person who was going pretty slowly (around 5 mph) and hit a metal plate that had been put over some construction work, so the motorcycle slid out from under him, he slid a bit on the pavement but was wearing all the thick leather pants/jacket/boots so no injury -- if he'd hit his head then the cranial swelling thing may have happened, even with a helmet -- if a helmet has been dropped on a hard surface, it drastically reduces its effectiveness - here are some stories : http://www.helmets.org/crashes.htm

My brother's best friend died when he was sitting on his very heavy/large Harley and it simply lost balance. So you could have your character sitting still with no helmet and if for some reason he twisted or whatever, the motorcycle could fall on him, or he could even be uninjured except for hitting his head.

Author Dave Farland's son had a traumatic brain injury a little over a year ago and he blogged about it (with photos) on his Facebook page (and also I think on his website) -- in that case, they did have skull bone removed and stored elsewhere on his body until they were ready to replace it on his head.

cmhbob said:

This is a really nice solution.

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Also not unrealistic -- I know a couple of people it has happened to (without major injury.)

Along Foxbeards thought a crainiectomy is fairly common procedure eith coup/contra coup injuries, subdural hematomas, and other cases of intracranial pressure. It's very easy to have them require a metal plate. The skull flaps that they take out for a crainiectomy get lost more often than you think. It's entirely possible, and not that uncommon, for a skull flap to be lost or damaged and for a titanium replacement to be made.

If you're still looking for an in-traffic scenario, I know someone who was riding once in heavy, slow'ish traffic on the highway with his open-face helmet unstrapped. The car ahead of him slammed on its brakes and he slammed into the car. He was in the inside lane, so luckily, when he flew off the bike, he landed in the grassy median. His helmet flew off when he landed, and he got a concussion, a broken collarbone and some road rash. Other than that, he was fine, mostly. Just a little moodier.