It’s important to protect your body while riding your motorcycle. Your bike leaves your head, limbs and skin exposed. That means losing control of your motorcycle can result in your skin ripping across the pavement. While road rash isn’t the most dangerous of motorcycle injuries, it’s still important to know how to treat it.
Road Rash Treatment: Avoiding Infection
Wash Your Hands to Wash the Road Rash Wounds
When tending to road rash, it’s important to wash your hands. If you’ll be touching the wound, you want to be careful not to transfer germs. Even when you can’t see them, your hands carry plenty of germs and bacteria. So, it’s important to wash them to prevent transferring the bacteria to your wound and causing infection.
Remove Debris
After washing your hands, work to remove the debris from the wound. In most cases of road rash, there may be pebbles and dirt left in your scratches. Removing this can be a delicate process–especially if your wounds are still sore. Therefore, you may want to use a tool like tweezers to be precise. However, you need to make sure to clean any tools before using them. Just like your hands, tweezers and other instruments can carry germs to your wound.
Change the Bandage
When treating road rash, it’s important to keep things as clean as possible to prevent getting an infection. One way to do this is by washing your hands and cleaning the wound. But another way to do that is to make sure to keep the bandage clean.
For the most part, it’s okay to change your covering twice a day–morning and night. However, if your bandage becomes wet or especially dirty, it may be a good idea to change it quickly. By keeping your covering clean, you are taking another step to prevent any infection.
In short, treating road rash is important because the wound can become infected. If that happens, a few deep cuts and scratches can become a serious injury that needs medical treatment. So, be sure to treat your wounds quickly, cleanly, and with care.