Took a fin through the leg

Hi folks! I thought I would ask my question here because I just wanted to get a sounding board of other surfers. As I sat in the ER with bandages and tourniquet on my leg, I asked them how often they got surfers with fin injuries and they said it was extremely common. I basically popped off the wave of my life, straight into a massive set wave. I knew that lip was landing on my head so I bailed the board and then in the ground pound was slammed straight into my board. Fin box ripped off and theres a nice hole in my wetsuit.

How often does this happen and what can I do to stop kooking on this? I've listened to pros about the impact zone and negative pockets of space to duck dive into, but it seems like there's this common thing that everyone has gone over the falls backwards, people do bail and then get pounded anyway etc. I know there's a positioning element to it, i.e. you learn where the bad positions are and start to steer clear, but how many of you have take a fin to something? Is it just part of the learning process if you start after your early/teen years? Do you have any advice beyond just "if the lip is gonna fall on you, bail". Like is it a good idea, if you can see this ahead of time, to just paddle straight toward the beach and hope for the best?