For any small child, almost every event serves as a learning experience. Children learn how to deal with all sorts of learning experiences. Still a child’s first encounter with a motor vehicle collision exposes that youth to the realities associated with an unfortunate situation.
Factors that increase the amount of danger to which such an encounter exposes a child.
• Pressure of the seat belt.
• The child’s susceptibility to whiplash injuries
• The child’s lack of familiarity with how to brace the body, when a collision seems imminent.
Because an adult does not face those same factors, he or she is more apt to come through an accident unscathed. Parents that feel fine, following a collision are likely to assume that a son or daughter also feels in good health. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
Furthermore, some of the symptoms associated with accident-caused injuries get viewed as everyday complaints. The headache associated with a concussion might get overlooked, because headaches seem to develop repeatedly in certain adults. Even odd behaviors might get explained-away by the parents of an injured teenager.
The limitation period
A limitation period for adults takes into consideration the amount of time that it normally takes for an injured adult to reach the state of MMI (maximum medical improvement). The legal system does not put any limitation period on the amount of time that a child has in which to file a personal injury claim. If a child gets hurt in an accident, the legal system does not even start the limitation period until that same child reaches the age of 18.
Unfortunately, if parents have not paid much attention to a child’s symptoms, the effects of a motor vehicle accident could grow slowly, producing a serious medical condition in a youth that has just turned 18. Indeed, that same youth might have a condition that the medical community struggles to explain. That absence of an explanation would reflect the result of a failure to note post-accident symptoms.
Alternatively, the approach taken by the medical community, in order to deal with a particular injury might have an impact on the life of any child that receives it. For instance, if a child were to sustain some type of head injury and then get a plate in the injured area, that could have an effect on the adult’s life. That is why it is essential to consult with a personal injury lawyer in Calgary, if anything shows up and seek damages.
Yet that effect would probably not show-up for quite some time. It might not create new medical problems until the child has reached adulthood, and has been able to start earning a living. In other words, one motor vehicle accident could have an effect on a young person’s future earning opportunities. It might even affect the age of retirement.