Careers in sports are short lived. Take professional basketball, for example: sure, once in a generation we get a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or a Tim Duncan, alien-human hybrids who play All-Star calibre basketball for 20 plus years. But for every Garnett or Stockton there are thousands of players who get four or five years in the league, at best. Many of these fleeting careers dwindle as a result of sports injuries. Michael Jordan thought Penny Hardaway was the heir to His Airness before Hardaway suffered knee injuries to end his career. Derrick Rose was the 2010-11 NBA MVP, leading the Bulls to the Eastern Conference Finals, but a slate of injuries since then has left him as a shell of his former self. For these and the countless other players with injury limitations, they can literally lose millions in contracts. While the stakes aren’t that high for the average person playing a sport, injury claims can still be substantial, and Toronto personal injury lawyers know the stats.
Who Gets Injured Most?
The Ontario Injury Compass, a report produced by Smart Risk in collaboration with The Government of Ontario, outlines telling statistics about sports injuries in Ontario. Perhaps the most startling of these is that every hour, an average of 3 people visit an emergency room or hospital for a sports related injury. But who are these people?
Naturally, the people injured in sports accidents, and those who could end up filing sport injury claims, are the people most likely to play sports. As such, there are virtually no annual sports injuries for those over the age of 60. The ages most commonly injured in sports are those between 15 and 19. Further, males are far more likely than females to sustain a sports injury: nearly four times as likely, in fact (~80% males to ~20% females). Considering that this is Canada, we also should not be surprised to see that hockey players are those most frequently sent to the emergency room or hospitalized.
What are the most Common Injuries?
There are somewhere in the range of 23,000 sports injury emergency room visits annually. Of these, 34% are upper limb injuries, including the wrist, hand, elbow, forearm, shoulder, and upper arm. Next, lower limb (e.g. ankle, foot, knee, lower leg, hip, and thigh) and head (e.g. ear, face, and nose) injuries made up 25% and 26%, respectively.
However, the percentage distribution shifts when analyzing the approximately 650 annual severe sports injuries that require hospitalization. From this category, 50% are lower limb injuries, and upper limb and head injuries are only 17% and 12%, respectively.
Whether it’s hockey, basketball, trampoline dodgeball, or any other sport, injury claims can get you valuable benefits to pay for any out of pocket expenses you’ve incurred. A Toronto personal injury lawyer knows just what the law is on sports injuries, and they can find out whether your injury is the result of someone else negligence. Will you be the next Tim Duncan, or will you be the next Derrick Rose? Get a free consultation at a Toronto personal injury law firm to find out.
Source:
http://www.oninjuryresources.ca/downloads/compass/sport_collision_compass5.pdf
http://www.oninjuryresources.ca/compass