Serious Car Accident Causes Brain Injury for Student Driver
A sophomore student baseball player has returned home after a serious automobile accident caused a life-threatening brain injury last year. Rhett Nelson was reportedly driving north on Highway 221 in South Carolina when he lost control of his vehicle. Nelson’s vehicle flipped about four and a half times and landed in the southbound lane of the roadway. Nelson’s mother, Rosemary suffered several broken bones in the accident.
Nelson spent a total of 13 days in the hospital including 3 days on life support and seven in intensive care. Within two weeks, Nelson regained the ability to walk and the only lasting effect was short-term memory loss.
Nelson was extremely lucky to make a full recovery following an accident as serious as this one. Following a severe brain injury, many people are unable to regain certain functions and some don’t regain consciousness at all. There is no report on the factors that played a part in this accident. In many cases, accidents of this severity could be caused by several factors. Sometimes vehicles are known to have serious flaws that cause them to flip over as in this incident. Other times, the driver’s error could cause this type of accident. Statistics from the CDC state that roughly 1.7 people sustain brain injuries per year. About 275,000 of those people are hospitalized for various amounts of time and 52,000 die as a result of the injury. Brain injuries are a contributing factor in roughly 30% of all deaths linked to injuries, according to the CDC.
