Wendy Moon wrote about the gas tank impact hazard in a 2005
Motorcycle Consumer News article,
Dangerous Designs?:
According to the database on motorcycle accidents collected by the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center, pelvic fractures occurred in 10.96% of the total 3720 accidents studied. Worse, pelvic fractures have a 50% mortality rate (deadly in half the cases). Although not all pelvic fractures occur in frontal crashes, many do. And because the abdomen is between the pelvis and the gas tank. vital organs will he injured if the rider comes into hard, sudden contact with certain tank shapes, not the least of which are both the male and female genitalia well as a woman's reproductive organs.
"Pelvic injuries may not be as life-threatening as a head injury," wrote Dr. Wobrock, who holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, "but they can be very debilitating and result in dysfunctions affecting an individual's ability to reproduce, ability to walk, ability to urinate. etc. and result in a dramatic decrease in quality of life." Such injuries include: pelvic fractures; castration; temporary or permanent penile dysfunction and/or mutilation; clitoral and labial deformity; abdominal injuries including rupture of such organs as the uterus, spleen and intestines; internal bleeding; bladder injuries; and renal failure.
...
Pelvic fractures, Wobrock found, are directly related to motorcycle design. Apart from the actual fracture, they often produce severe internal bleeding that's hard to diagnose in time and equally hard to halt even if the patient undergoes surgery. And, apart from other injuries, shock is present 40% of the time.
The most common pelvis fracture was the so-called "open-book fracture" that occurs when the hip bones, which normally point forward, are spread 90deg outward and resemble an open book. For men especially, open-book fractures necessarily entail other debilitating and, at least temporarily, lifechanging injuries to the genitals. But these kind of fractures also make lower abdominal injuries more likely, since the bony cage that protects them is cracked open--and those injuries can be life-threatening or, at the very least, complicate the healing process. Genital damage from blunt force trauma can be permanent and result in the complete loss of sexual activity as well as normal urination.
Ugh.
