Disability Accidents: Types and Statistics
Author: Disabled World (DW)
Updated/Revised Date: 2025/12/31
Contents: Synopsis - Introduction - Main - Publications - Subtopics
Synopsis: Information regarding accidents and disabilities including facts and statistics of common disabling injuries that can occur in the home or workplace.
Automobile accidents claim more lives than any other type of accidental death and are responsible for innumerable injuries. The majority of head injuries are caused by road traffic accidents, falls, sports and assaults. Accidents on the roads and in industrial environments can happen to anybody, resulting in severe limb injury and subsequent disability.
Introduction
An accident is defined as a specific, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, with no apparent and deliberate cause but with marked effects.
Main Content
Automobile accidents claim more lives than any other type of accidental death and are responsible for innumerable injuries. The majority of head injuries are caused by road-traffic accidents, falls, sports and assaults. Accidents on the roads and in industrial environments can happen to anybody, resulting in severe limb injury and subsequent disability. Whiplash is the name for neck sprains to the cervical, thoracic or lumbar spines and is commonly associated with vehicle accidents, usually when the vehicle has been hit in the rear.
In a U.S. study, one hundred and thirty-seven patients attending hospital following road traffic accidents were contracted regarding pain in the neck between 1 and 2 years later.
- Eighty-five (62 percent) stated that they had suffered pain in the neck at some time following their accident.
- 42 (30.6 percent) who were noted to have pain in the neck when examined soon after the accident.
- Thirty-one patients (22.6 percent) still felt occasional pain 1 year after the accident, and 5 had continuous pain at 1 year.
Statistics: Disabilities incurred by 2502 road accident patients admitted in 3 separate years to an Accident Hospital:
- There were about equal numbers of disabled among pedestrians, motorcyclists, and vehicle occupants. This corresponds to the high relative frequency and severity of injuries among motorcyclists.
- Most of the serious disabilities were caused by head or lower limb injuries.
- Different severities of disability were not closely correlated with Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS), (ISS) or (PI) scores or with treatment periods, but useful threshold values are described which separate groups with high and low rates of disability.
- For given severities of injury, disabilities were less severe among young casualties.
- Comparisons with other studies show rather wide variations in estimates of the incidence of slight disabilities.
- There is fair agreement with the present findings that serious disabilities occur in about 3% of inpatient hospital cases, or in about 1% of total casualties.
However great the risks are for the average driver, the consequences of an accident are usually much more serious for a motorcyclist, often leading to long-term disability. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that there are approximately 6.6 million motorcycles registered in America, and this figure does not include scooters. The NHTSA also reported that nearly 2,500 motorcyclists die in traffic accidents each year, and while this number was previously decreasing from 1990 to 1997, it has increased at least 40 percent steadily since 1997.
Examples of injury-related impairments resulting in disabilities include:
- Psychological trauma.
- Paralysis due to spinal cord trauma.
- Partial or complete amputation of limbs.
- Sensory disability such as blindness and deafness.
- Physical or cognitive limitations due to neurotrauma.
- Physical limb deformation resulting in mobility impairments.
A loss of limb or severe disability has a disastrous effect on a person physically, psychologically and economically. Taking out some form of accident or disability insurance in case you need to make a claim that involves either accident or disability certainly makes a lot of sense.