Broken bones are among the most serious and common injuries from car accidents in Missouri.
The force of impact can fracture ribs, arms, legs, facial bones, and the spine, often requiring surgery, months of recovery, and extensive medical treatment that creates significant financial hardship for accident victims.
If another driver caused your crash and resulting fracture, Missouri law allows you to seek compensation for all your medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and future care needs.
However, insurance companies often try to minimize broken bone claims or shift blame to reduce what they have to pay, making it crucial to understand your rights and the claims process.
Hidden Signs of Broken Bones After a Car Accident
After a car accident, some signs of a broken bone are obvious. You might see a visible deformity where your bone is bent at an unnatural angle, or you might have a bone piercing through your skin.
Other signs are easier to miss, especially when adrenaline is masking your pain. Your body’s natural response to trauma can hide serious injuries for hours or even days after the crash.
Look out for these common symptoms that indicate a possible fracture:
- Intense pain: The pain gets worse when you move or touch the injured area
- Swelling: You notice rapid swelling around the site of the injury
- Bruising: Dark discoloration appears within hours of the crash
- Numbness: You experience loss of feeling below the injury
- Grinding sensation: You feel or hear bones rubbing together when you move
- Difficulty breathing: This can signal broken ribs or chest injuries
Even if your pain seems manageable right after the crash, you should get medical attention immediately. Adrenaline can mask serious injuries, and some fractures don’t show symptoms until swelling develops or shock wears off.
What Fractures Are Common After Missouri Car Accidents?
The force from a car accident can break bones in different ways depending on how the crash happens. Missouri’s mix of high-speed highways, rural roads, and busy city intersections creates various types of collisions including T-bone crashes that cause different fracture patterns.
The way your bone breaks determines your treatment and recovery time. Understanding these differences helps you know what to expect from your medical care.
Fracture Types Explained
Your doctor will classify your fracture to determine the best treatment approach:
| Fracture Type | Description | Typical Treatment | Recovery Time |
| Simple/Closed | Bone breaks but stays under the skin | Cast or splint | 6-8 weeks |
| Compound/Open | Broken bone pierces through the skin | Immediate surgery | 3-6 months |
| Comminuted | Bone shatters into three or more pieces | Surgery with plates, screws, or rods | 4-6 months+ |
| Hairline | Small, thin crack in the bone | Rest and immobilization | 4-6 weeks |
| Displaced | Broken pieces separate and misalign | Surgery to realign pieces | 3-4 months |
Compound fractures are medical emergencies because the open wound creates a high risk of infection. These injuries require immediate surgery and extensive follow-up care.
Comminuted fractures often happen in high-speed crashes where the bone can’t absorb the impact. These typically require the most complex surgeries and longest recovery times.
What Bones Break Most in Car Accidents?
During a car crash, your body absorbs massive force in a split second. Certain bones are more vulnerable because of how they’re positioned and what they hit during the collision.
The most commonly broken bones in Missouri car accidents include:
- Ribs: From seatbelt force or airbag deployment
- Wrists and arms: From bracing for impact against the steering wheel or dashboard
- Legs and femur: From knees hitting the dashboard or being trapped under it
- Spine and vertebrae: From violent back-and-forth whiplash motion that can cause spinal cord injuries
- Facial bones: From striking the steering wheel, dashboard, or airbag
- Clavicle: From shoulder harness pressure during the crash
- Hip and pelvis: Especially common in side-impact T-bone crashes
Multiple fractures often occur together in serious crashes. The force that breaks one bone rarely stops there, especially in high-speed collisions or rollovers.
How Do Doctors Confirm a Fracture?
In the emergency room, doctors start with a physical exam to check for obvious signs of injury. They’ll look for swelling, deformity, and test your ability to move the injured area.
X-rays are the most common diagnostic tool for confirming fractures. For more complex injuries or when doctors suspect damage to surrounding tissues, they might order a CT scan or MRI.
Why Imaging Can Miss a Fracture
Sometimes your initial emergency room X-ray can miss a broken bone. Hairline fractures are tiny cracks that may not show up immediately after the accident, especially when swelling hasn’t developed yet.
Human error can also play a role when radiologists are reading scans quickly in busy emergency rooms. Soft tissue swelling can sometimes obscure fracture lines on X-rays.
If you continue having pain days or weeks after your crash despite a “normal” X-ray, you need follow-up medical care. A repeat X-ray taken a week later or a more detailed MRI often reveals fractures that weren’t visible initially.
Don’t ignore persistent pain just because your first X-ray was normal. Your body is telling you something is wrong, and you deserve proper diagnosis and treatment.
What Treatment and Recovery Look Like
Your treatment journey starts with stabilizing your injury, either at the crash scene by paramedics or in the emergency room. Doctors will determine if you need surgery to repair the break or if the bone can heal properly with just a cast or splint.
Surgery becomes necessary when bones are displaced, shattered, or when the break won’t heal correctly on its own. Surgeons use plates, screws, or rods to hold bone pieces in the right position while they heal.
After your bone is stabilized, rehabilitation begins. Physical therapy helps restore strength, flexibility, and normal movement to the injured area. This process can take weeks or months depending on which bone was broken and how severe the fracture was.
Your age, overall health, and whether you follow your treatment plan all affect how quickly you recover. Younger patients typically heal faster, but anyone can have complications if they don’t follow their doctor’s instructions.
What Should You Do After Breaking a Bone in a Car Crash?
Learning you have a broken bone from a car crash can be overwhelming. Your immediate focus should be on getting proper medical care, but the steps you take next also protect your ability to recover fair compensation.
Step by Step After a Crash-Related Fracture
- Seek immediate medical care: Go to the emergency room for serious injuries right away, even if your pain seems manageable at first
- Follow all treatment plans: Attend every doctor’s appointment and physical therapy session to show you’re serious about recovery
- Document everything: Keep copies of all medical records, bills, and receipts related to your accident
- Photograph your injuries: Take pictures of casts, bruises, surgical incisions, and scars as visual evidence
- Report to insurance: Notify your insurance company, but avoid giving recorded statements to the other driver’s insurer
- Contact an attorney: Speak with our experienced Missouri auto accident lawyers before accepting any settlement offers
Missing medical appointments or not following your treatment plan gives insurance companies ammunition to argue that your injury isn’t serious. They’ll use any gap in treatment against you when determining your settlement.
Keep a pain journal documenting how your injury affects your daily activities. This personal record becomes powerful evidence of how the fracture has impacted your life beyond just medical bills.
What Compensation Can You Recover for Broken Bones?
Missouri law allows you to seek compensation for all losses caused by another driver’s negligence. This includes both your financial costs and the personal impact the injury has had on your life.
Medical Bills, Future Care, and Lost Income
Economic damages cover your financial losses with clear dollar amounts. Your medical expenses include everything from the ambulance ride and emergency room visit to surgery, hospitalization, and physical therapy sessions.
Lost wages from work after a car accident covers time you’ve missed due to your injury. This includes not just your regular pay, but also overtime, bonuses, and benefits you would have earned.
Future medical costs are also recoverable if your doctor expects you’ll need ongoing treatment. This might include additional surgeries, long-term physical therapy, or medical equipment you’ll need at home.
If your fracture affects your ability to work long-term or forces you to change careers, you can seek compensation for lost future earning capacity.
Pain and Suffering, Scarring, and Disability
Non-economic damages compensate you for losses that don’t have clear price tags. Physical pain and suffering includes both the immediate pain from your injury and any chronic pain you’ll experience long-term.
Emotional distress from the trauma of the accident and the stress of dealing with a serious injury also qualifies for compensation. Many people develop anxiety about driving or being a passenger after a serious crash.
Permanent scarring from surgical incisions or the injury itself can affect your self-confidence and how others perceive you. Disability that limits your ability to enjoy activities you used to love, particularly with permanent injuries, also deserves compensation.
Loss of companionship with your spouse or family members due to your injury can be included in your claim as well.
What Factors Affect a Broken Bone Settlement in Missouri?
No two fracture cases result in the same settlement amount. Several key factors determine how much compensation you can recover for your broken bone injury.
Surgery, Severity, and Hairline Fracture Recovery
Fractures requiring surgery with hardware like plates and screws typically result in higher settlements than simple breaks treated with casts. The complexity of your treatment directly affects your compensation amount.
However, even hairline fractures deserve fair compensation for your pain, medical costs, and time away from work. Don’t let insurance companies minimize your claim just because you didn’t need surgery.
The bone that was broken also matters. A broken leg that keeps you from walking for months will typically be worth more than a broken finger that heals quickly.
Complications during healing, like infections or bones that don’t heal properly, increase your settlement value because they require additional treatment and cause more suffering.
Comparative Fault and Seatbelt Evidence
Missouri uses pure comparative negligence, meaning your settlement gets reduced by your percentage of fault for the accident. If you were 20% at fault, your final compensation drops by 20%.
Insurance companies often try to blame accident victims to reduce their payouts. They might argue you were speeding, not paying attention, or violated some traffic law.
Not wearing a seatbelt can be used as evidence of comparative fault, but Missouri law limits how much this can reduce your compensation. The insurance company must prove that wearing a seatbelt would have prevented or reduced your specific injury.
We fight back against unfair fault assignments by gathering evidence that shows what really happened in your crash.
Insurance Limits, UM, and UIM Coverage
The at-fault driver’s insurance policy limits create a ceiling on how much you can recover from their insurer. Missouri’s minimum liability coverage is only $25,000 per person, which often isn’t enough for serious fracture cases.
This is why having your own Uninsured Motorist (UM) and Underinsured Motorist (UIM) coverage is crucial. These coverages protect you when the other driver has no insurance or not enough insurance to cover your damages.
Your own insurance company becomes responsible for paying the difference between what the at-fault driver’s insurance covers and what you actually deserve.
What Missouri Laws Impact Your Claim?
Understanding key Missouri laws helps you protect your rights and maximize your compensation. These rules govern who pays for your injuries and how long you have to take legal action.
At-Fault Rules and Pure Comparative Negligence
Missouri is an at-fault state, which means the person who caused the crash must pay for the resulting damages. This is different from no-fault states where your own insurance pays regardless of who was to blame.
Under Missouri’s pure comparative negligence system, you can still recover compensation even if you were partially responsible for the accident. Your final settlement just gets reduced by your percentage of fault.
For example, if your total damages are $100,000 and you were 10% at fault, you would receive $90,000. Even if you were 90% at fault, you could still recover $10,000.
Five-Year Deadline to File
Missouri gives you five years from the date of your accident to file a personal injury lawsuit. While this seems like plenty of time, you shouldn’t wait to take action.
Evidence disappears, witnesses forget what they saw, and medical records can be lost or destroyed over time. The sooner you start building your case, the stronger it will be.
If you miss the five-year deadline, you lose your right to seek compensation forever. Courts will dismiss your case regardless of how strong your evidence is or how badly you were hurt.
Child Growth Plate Injuries and Follow-Up
When children suffer broken bones in car accidents, there’s additional concern about damage to growth plates. These are areas of developing tissue near the ends of long bones where growth occurs.
Injury to a growth plate can stunt bone development and cause future complications that don’t become apparent until years later. Children’s fracture cases often require ongoing medical monitoring and may need expert testimony about future problems.
The potential for long-term complications makes children’s fracture cases more complex and potentially more valuable than similar injuries in adults.
What Evidence Strengthens a Fracture Claim?
Building a strong broken bone claim requires gathering the right evidence to prove what happened and how it affected you. The quality of your evidence directly impacts your settlement amount.
Imaging Records and Treating Doctor Opinions
Your medical records form the foundation of your fracture claim. X-rays, CT scans, and MRI results provide clear proof of your injury and its severity.
Your treating doctor’s opinions about your injury, treatment needs, and prognosis carry significant weight with insurance companies and juries. These medical professionals know your case best because they’ve examined you and followed your progress.
Independent medical exams requested by insurance companies are designed to minimize your injury. At Beck & Beck Missouri Car Accident Lawyers, we help you prepare for these exams and challenge any unfair conclusions.
Photos, Witnesses, and Vehicle EDR Data
Pictures from the accident scene help reconstruct what happened and show the force of impact. Photos of vehicle damage, skid marks, and road conditions all support your claim.
Witness statements from people who saw the crash provide independent confirmation of how the accident occurred. We interview witnesses quickly before their memories fade.
Modern vehicles have Event Data Recorders (EDRs) that capture information about speed, braking, and steering in the seconds before a crash. This electronic evidence can prove the other driver was speeding or didn’t try to avoid the collision.
Pain Journal and Daily Limits
Keeping a detailed record of how your injury affects your daily life strengthens your pain and suffering claim. Write down your pain levels, activities you can’t do, and how the injury impacts your mood and relationships.
Document specific examples of limitations, like being unable to pick up your children, missing important family events, or needing help with basic tasks like cooking or cleaning.
This personal evidence helps insurance companies and juries understand that your injury is more than just medical bills. It shows the real human impact of what you’ve gone through.
How Long Do Broken Bone Claims Take?
The timeline for resolving your fracture case depends on several factors, including the severity of your injury and whether the insurance company cooperates. Most cases settle within six months to two years after the accident.
MMI, Treatment Timeline, and Settlement
Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI) is the point where your doctor determines you’ve healed as much as you’re going to. You shouldn’t settle your case before reaching MMI because you won’t know the full extent of your damages yet.
Rushing to settle before you’ve completed treatment often results in inadequate compensation that doesn’t cover your future medical needs. Insurance companies prefer quick settlements because they pay less money.
We advise clients to focus on their recovery first and let us handle the legal process. Settling too early is one of the biggest mistakes accident victims make.
Negotiation, Litigation, and Trial
Most broken bone cases settle through negotiation without going to court. However, being prepared for trial often leads to better settlement offers because insurance companies know we’re serious about getting you fair compensation.
If negotiations fail, we’ll file a lawsuit and take your case through the court system. While this takes longer, it often results in higher compensation amounts.
The possibility of going to trial often motivates insurance companies to make reasonable settlement offers.
Skilled Attorneys Specializing in Missouri Auto Accident Law Since 1990
At Beck & Beck Missouri Car Accident Lawyers, we focus on Missouri auto accident law. As the only law firm in Missouri that handles only car accident cases, we understand exactly what you’re going through.
Our family-run firm has helped many injured Missourians and handles every case personally. We handle every case personally, so you’ll never feel like just another number in our system.
We know how overwhelming it feels to deal with serious injuries, medical bills, and insurance companies all at once. That’s why we take care of the legal fight while you focus on getting better.
Our team is available 24/7 to answer your questions and provide the support you need during this difficult time. We offer free consultations and never charge fees unless we win your case.
You don’t have to face this alone. Contact us today to get the experienced legal help you deserve.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Much Is a Broken Bone Worth in Missouri?
Settlement amounts vary widely depending on which bone was broken, whether surgery was required, and how the injury affects your life; simple fractures often result in lower settlements while complex surgical cases typically lead to higher settlements.
What if My ER X-Ray or CT Was Normal but I Still Hurt?
You should seek follow-up care with an orthopedic specialist since hairline fractures and soft tissue injuries often don’t appear on initial emergency room scans. Persistent pain indicates something is wrong and needs further investigation.
Can I Recover if I Was Partly at Fault or Not Wearing a Seatbelt?
Yes, Missouri’s pure comparative fault law allows you to recover damages even if you share some blame for the crash. Your compensation will be reduced by your percentage of fault, but you can still receive money for your injuries.
How Are Medical Bills Paid After a Missouri Car Accident?
Your health insurance or Medical Payments (MedPay) coverage from your auto policy typically pays for initial treatment, which is how medical bills are paid initially. We then seek reimbursement for these costs from the at-fault driver’s insurance company as part of your settlement.
Do Children’s Fractures Change a Case?
Children’s fracture cases require special attention due to potential growth plate damage that could cause future complications. These cases may need expert medical testimony about long-term effects and typically result in higher settlement values.
How Long Does a Broken Bone Case Usually Take?
Fracture cases often settle after you complete medical treatment and reach maximum medical improvement. Complex cases requiring litigation may take 1-2 years, but thorough preparation often leads to better outcomes.
