The 10 Most Common Traumatic Injuries in Michigan on Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend in Michigan is basically America's annual tradition of saying, "What's the worst that could happen?" right before someone cannonballs into unfamiliar shallow water, clutching a lit Roman candle, while chugging a can of hard cider.

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Between packed highways and short tempers, overloaded boats, backyard grill wars, ATV rides gone wrong, and that one uncle who treats fireworks like a military reenactment, emergency rooms see a sharp jump in injuries over the holiday weekend.

Why Holiday Weekends Send More Michiganders to the ER

According to Cook Children's Hospital, burns, falls, fractures, dehydration, and traumatic head injuries also climb once the grill starts, and bonfires spark up. Doctors and safety experts say many of these injuries are preventable with... basic common sense. Unfortunately, common sense tends to leave Michigan sometime around the first weekend that's north of 70 degrees, or the first three-day weekend, whichever comes first.

WellRX reports that things like wearing life jackets, slowing down on the roads, drinking water, using fireworks correctly and not launching them from parts of the human anatomy, and not trying to create amateur motocross videos in your cousin's backyard all dramatically lower the risk of visiting the ER.

Nothing says "great holiday memory" quite like explaining to the Emergency Room staff how a lawn chair, a jet ski, and a bratwurst somehow became medically connected.

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To help you avoid becoming the person everyone talks about at next year's cookout, we've put together the 10 most common Memorial Day weekend injuries in Michigan, what causes them, and how severe they can become.